Should Power Source have greater meaning?

[gyor]

Personally I never liked what for 4e did to the binder, neither visage pack, nor the new warlock subclass, nor should it have been arcane. They sucked out all the original cool flavour out of the most interesting class of 3.x. The power source should been its own thing, the magic didn't come from reality, not even the far realms. The binder had an amazingly creepy feel in 3.x, really destrurbing and you don't get the feeling its anything other then a warlock in 4e. Normally I prefer divine classes, but I adored the binder. Plus binder should be charisma based, they constantly make deals with vestiages.
If they make a vestiage pack for the binder, I hope they regain that unique creepy feel and use a special power source for it. Maybe the Obilvion source.

 

[Pour]

Personally I never liked what for 4e did to the binder, neither visage pack, nor the new warlock subclass, nor should it have been arcane. They sucked out all the original cool flavour out of the most interesting class of 3.x. The power source should been its own thing, the magic didn't come from reality, not even the far realms. The binder had an amazingly creepy feel in 3.x, really destrurbing and you don't get the feeling its anything other then a warlock in 4e. Normally I prefer divine classes, but I adored the binder. Plus binder should be charisma based, they constantly make deals with vestiages.
If they make a vestiage pack for the binder, I hope they regain that unique creepy feel and use a special power source for it. Maybe the Obilvion source.

Can't say I'm overly thrilled with the 4e binder myself. I'm definitely of the mind there should be more power sources than currently, though, and would embrace an Artifice, Oblivion, or my personal hopeful Dream. Dreams and Nightmares fill a space that no other source really touches, and yet hinting at psychology, hopes, fears.

I'm wondering now if warlocks, or classes in general, should have been power source neutral and dictated entirely by role features (mark, healing word, etc) and personal touches (origin, weapon choice, etc). Then a source was applied to them, allowing for a feylock to in fact be a Primal caster, or a starlock Far (or whatever aberrant/star/Lovecraftian name you wanted to call it, which in fact makes for another good one imho). Not saying every class should have every power source as an option, but you got to admit a Far ranger or Divine shaman would be cool to see.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

If power source are to have mechanical heft, and then flavor related directly to those mechanics, you could potentially get a lot of milage out of having a slightly longer list, but making each source a bit more narrow. Then make every character out of two sources, with the option to double up on one if preferred.

A fighter is a martial/martial character. He takes a bunch of martial stuff. Then he takes a bunch more martial stuff. A barbarian is martial/primal. A druid is maybe divine/primal. A wizard might be arcane/shadow or arcane/elemental or any of several options with arcane, depending upon his specialty. Of course, he could also be arcane/arcane.

This would work even better if the class features all became role features, separate from the power source, and the class still had a few things uniquely its own. I think because of its history with classes, again and again D&D designs come up with a good idea that can carry a bunch of weight--and then overwhelm it throwing on even more weight.

 

[drothgery]

I strongly disagree with druids becoming divine. They were a fluff problem to 3e because they were a pseudo-divine character. They never had their own niche. Primal is their niche and their turf.

Read down the thread where you're arguing against delricho's proposed Artifice power source, as a power source that exists for pretty much one class. That's a big part of what I think of primal. The primal classes in 4e are barbarian (should be martial by their pre-4e powers), essentials rangers (only half-primal and traditionally non-martial features are mostly ignored), warden (aka melee druid), shaman (aka healer druid), and druid. So it's basically a power source for druids. And that's not enough for a class that was casting mostly cleric spells in every prior edition of D&D.

Yes, it makes Dark Sun and some other worlds work more nicely if you can ban divine outright. But I think it makes the game work better if you can use a class that existed prior to 4e as the divine controller, and I don't think there are any solid, non-divine classes I'd want druids sharing powers with.

 

[Incenjucar]

The concept of "Artifice" isn't a power source, it's a way of USING a power source. Martial Artifice is Batarangs, Arcane Artifice is Alchemy, Divine Artifice is Runes, Primal Artifice is Fetishes, Elemental is Golems, etc etc. Artifice is just using a variety of objects to make attacks, and tells you nothing about what empowers those objects.

A power source is where the ENERGY behind the ability comes from.

Artifice as a power source is like having a "Sword" power source.

 

[Zaphling]

The concept of "Artifice" isn't a power source, it's a way of USING a power source. Martial Artifice is Batarangs, Arcane Artiface is Alchemy, Divine Artiface is Runes, Primal Artiface is Fetishes, Elemental is Golems, etc etc. Artiface is just using a variety of objects to make attacks, and tells you nothing about what empowers those objects.

A power source is where the ENERGY behind the ability comes from.

Artiface as a power source is like having a "Sword" power source.

That's my point. Thank you for this.

 

[Gryph]

I'd agree on reassiging some classes to different power sources, but really I'd leave the ranger as martial; Rangers very rarely actually cast spells or otherwise used the more magical elements (other than the animal companions that were more hinderance than help) of the class in earlier editions in my experience.

Really, I think I'd kill off the primal power source and shift both monks and druids to divine. Monk are often tied to D&D religions despite class features modeled off of martial arts film characters, while druids were divine casters in every pre-4e version of D&D. That lets you fill out the grid for divine with traditional D&D classes (monk/striker, paladin/defender, cleric/leader, druid/controller).

Actually, I think if you were going to expand the use of power sources, I would treat more class concepts as hybrid power source classes.

Ranger makes more sense to me as a Martial/Primal class (and gets a better flavor seperation from damage built fighters). Paladin, to me, feels better as a Divine/Martial class instead of a pure divine class. Monks, also, would feel better to me as a Martial/Psionic class.

 

[KidSnide]

Actually, I think if you were going to expand the use of power sources, I would treat more class concepts as hybrid power source classes.

Ranger makes more sense to me as a Martial/Primal class (and gets a better flavor seperation from damage built fighters). Paladin, to me, feels better as a Divine/Martial class instead of a pure divine class. Monks, also, would feel better to me as a Martial/Psionic class.

Agreed. Power source should be a property of an ability, not a property of a class. A class should be associated with a power source only to the extent to which that power source describes the class's abilities. I don't see any reason a cleric of a beast god couldn't have primal abilities (or a cleric of a war god couldn't have some martial abilities).

4e stepped away from the design trap of unnecessary completionism, by -- for example -- not feeling the need to map every elemental being to the four primary elements. However, 4e delved heavily into a classification design trap, where classes were shoehorned into power sources.

-KS

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Actually, I think if you were going to expand the use of power sources, I would treat more class concepts as hybrid power source classes.

Ranger makes more sense to me as a Martial/Primal class (and gets a better flavor seperation from damage built fighters). Paladin, to me, feels better as a Divine/Martial class instead of a pure divine class. Monks, also, would feel better to me as a Martial/Psionic class.

Gladly this is where the design is going from essentials on...
We also see shared powers between druid an hunters for example, between slayers and knights...
If we had shared powers, listed by power source and maybe role, you could easily vut all available powers by a lot...
You just to make sure, class identity comes with features of the class.

So a monk could have flurry of blow and some movement related powers, but takes most powers from the martial striker list, and maybe psionic control.
You could even give different kind of access to those lists.

Minor and major access to those power lists. (Minor would give you powers that are four levels lower... or would downgrade encounter powers to dailies...)

 

[DEFCON 1]

We're at the point now in 4E's development that we can see some of the holes in the power source idea, and it highlights part of the problem of trying to jerryrig the system to fit classes into it.

I think we can all agree that Martial makes sense as power source. The energy of the classes comes from within the body. You can argue whether Ranger should be in it or not (and if it was to get removed, you'd basically just replace it with the 'Archer' class)... but the concept and application of the source works. Personally... I do think something should be added to the source to really tie it together in the next iteration of the game (whether that be the Essentials idea of 'basic attacks with mods' or else making weapon groups more prolific over all the Martial classes and not just Fighter.)

Psionic power coming from the Far Realm? Works great. Monks get removed from it obviously, but otherwise, it's a great idea and you can keep the whole concept of Augments to retain some mechanical flavor to the classes.

The Divine source also works for what it's supposed to... classes which are granted their power from divine beings, or more to the point, taken directly from the Astral Sea.

The problem here though... is that WotC didn't follow through with this way of thinking. By rights, the Elemental source should therefore be power gifted by the creatures of the Elemental Chaos or from the Chaos itself (demons, elemental lords and the like). The Shadow power source is gifted or powered by the Shadowfell.

And here's where the biggest screw up is for their power source concept... Arcane should be directly powered by the Feywild. The Feywild as spec'd has an overabundance of arcane energy and pretty much all the creatures there use it and are infused by it. But the problem is... because the Feywild is considered by pretty much everybody to be more about NATURE, rather than MAGIC... you have the conundrum of creating Arcane classes that have nothing to do with the Feywild, and instead Arcane becomes this nebulous source where dragons power sorcerers, music powers bards, putting elementals inside objects powers artificers, and warlocks negotiate with archfey, far realm creatures, devils, and their own ancestors to get their abilities! What the hell? The truth is... the Arcane source is actually NOT A POWER SOURCE AT ALL. It's a label that gets assigned to any class that uses the nebulous term 'magic'... regardless of where that 'magic' comes from.

And the stupid part of all this is that the one power source which is ENTIRELY ABOUT NATURE (Primal) and should be all over what the Feywild is about... is completely fluffed AWAY from the Feywild. And WotC had to create this whole concept of 'primal spirits' to grant the primal classes their powers.

Truth be told... the Arcane and Primal power sources should really have been swapped. Primal should be all about getting their power from the Feywild and the creatures and nature within it... and Arcane should be all about the energy that the primary world (and its denizens) just have. Whether that be the sorcerers who can siphon arcane energy off the the dragons in the world... the wizards, bards, and swordmages who can tap into the ley lines of arcane energy and channel them through implements, instruments, and weapons... or the runemasters, alchemists, and artificers who can siphon ley energy and store it into objects to use at a later point.

And warlocks? They're the special ones who get to go cross-source, as they can be Primal for the Fey Pacts, Divine for the Infernal Pacts, Psionic for the Star Pacts, Shadow for Gloom Pacts, and Arcane for the Vestige Pacts.

You do this kind of thing... making the power sources ACTUAL and CONSISTENT fonts of energy from which PCs get their abilities... and you can start to have them retain a little more meaning that they have in the past.