D&D 4E Some thoughts on 4e magic from a designer

[Nahat Anoj]

With the usual caveats about needing to see the actual rules and all that, I think these are good changes. I reservedly approve.

I particularly look forward to "real" Illusionist and Necromancy classes.

As do I.

I think making classes out of some of the old schools (Summoner, Diviner, and Enchanter work best for me) would be cool. But Illusionist and Necromancy are the most important IMO.

 

[Pale]

I like this particualr bit of news. One of my favorite 1E characters was the disowned son of an Archamage... disowned because he chose the path of the Illusionist.

I'd love to be able to re-create that smart-assed character once again without hedging it.

 

[Rechan]

I sure hope that they make the Necromancer and Conjurer their own classes. I loved the Dread Necromancer/Beguiler (at least, I thought they had some seriously nice flavor to them).

I'd be perfectly happy if wizards had just a few tricks of these types in their toolkit, but to be Good at X, you need to put a lot of focus in X. As long as you can do a little bit of Y too.

 

[Cam Banks]

Hmm. I was really thinking that these sorts of differences would have been best represented by talent trees, not whole new classes. I don't know if I like the idea of a whole new mess of classes in the game the way 3.5 has headed.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[broghammerj]

Hmm. I was really thinking that these sorts of differences would have been best represented by talent trees, not whole new classes. I don't know if I like the idea of a whole new mess of classes in the game the way 3.5 has headed.

Cheers,
Cam

More classes will sell more specialists books which is why I stopped buying 3.5 books years ago. I guess I'll do the same with 4E. Just the core mam.....just the core.

 

[Lackhand]

I remember hearing a few snippets along the lines of "introducing new foci" and "new talent trees instead of prestige classes"...

The variant necromancer/conjurer/illusionist classes might be choices at that level of mechanics.
So, new classes, but taking up far less page space, which is kind of nice.

You actually don't need a necromancer in the core-rules out of the gate, unless there's one in the party. You can get by with fudging.

Luckily.

Ooops. Got interrupted by Battlestar Galactica. Got scooped. Damn.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Hmm. I was really thinking that these sorts of differences would have been best represented by talent trees, not whole new classes. I don't know if I like the idea of a whole new mess of classes in the game the way 3.5 has headed.

I knew this was the direction they were heading in when they said "all of the 3.5 edition classes would be in 4th edition." and I realized they were referring to them all, not just the ones in the PHB (except for a couple they admitted were killed and had their stuff stolen).

Then they started talking about Warlord and Swordmage and I realized that base classes are the thing in 4th Ed.

Which, of course, makes sense given the new philosophy on designing things for their purpose and making sure everything has a purpose. Rather than making classes that are general, you give them purposes, and each purpose wizard or cleric had before can be split off as another class.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I knew this was the direction they were heading in when they said "all of the 3.5 edition classes would be in 4th edition." and I realized they were referring to them all, not just the ones in the PHB (except for a couple they admitted were killed and had their stuff stolen).

Then they started talking about Warlord and Swordmage and I realized that base classes are the thing in 4th Ed.

Which, of course, makes sense given the new philosophy on designing things for their purpose and making sure everything has a purpose. Rather than making classes that are general, you give them purposes, and each purpose wizard or cleric had before can be split off as another class.

I like the idea of separate classes for specialist roles. The idea that one class can do everything seems to me to dilute the effectiveness of those specialities it's trying to cover. Then again, I always used to play Illusionists back in the day.

 

[Keldryn]

The Bard and the Beguiler are the 3.5e takes on the Illusionist.

Specialist wizards were a bad idea, implemented poorly. If they're dead, much like cleric spheres from 2e, I will rejoice.

The 1e illusionist - that didn't share all of its spells with a regular magic-user - was cool.

Cheers!

I love the idea of the most powerful spells of a particular "school" generally being restricted to true "specialists," and I've been wanting that for a long time now. The 1st Edition Illusionist was cool, because she wasn't just a Magic-User with an extra Illusion/Phantasm spell per day and a marginal increase in the difficulty of disbelieving her illusions. She got Phantasmal Force as a first-level spell, whereas Magic-Users had to wait until they could cast 3rd-level spells. There were plenty of spells that only appeared on the Illusionist's spell lists. And all of that flavour was lost in 2nd Edition, which not only made specialists bland but it made the general Mages kind of bland as well.

I never liked the idea of all Mages/Wizards having access to the spells that were once the sole province of Illusionists in 1e, nor how Clerics ended up with spells that were once exclusive to Druids. 2e casters were a really bland mish-mash.

I'm glad that 3e mostly killed the 2e versions of Clerics/Priests. I liked them at the time in 2e, but I've come back around to the original vision of the Cleric: the holy warrior who is blessed with the divine power of his faith, who takes up arms to defend his beliefs and the followers of his faith. I don't see deities (of any "portfolio") wasting their divine power on wimpy losers who hang out in town all day telling everyone to love and respect each other.

So yeah, let the generalist Wizards have a wide variety of spells and some competency in all aspects of arcane magic, but make the specialists actually better at their chosen form of magic. They should be able to do things that generalists can't.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I love the idea of the most powerful spells of a particular "school" generally being restricted to true "specialists," and I've been wanting that for a long time now. The 1st Edition Illusionist was cool, because she wasn't just a Magic-User with an extra Illusion/Phantasm spell per day and a marginal increase in the difficulty of disbelieving her illusions.

Actually, they don't even get the latter. Just one extra spell per level. Isn't it just inspiring?