Indeed. The psion is supposed to make others cry in the corner, preferably from a hefty Psychic Crush.
D&D 5E The classes of 5e (now with 90% less speculation)
- Thread starter Ainamacar
- Start date
Indeed. The psion is supposed to make others cry in the corner, preferably from a hefty Psychic Crush.
Actually, I'm not sure we'll see a dedicated psion class in the PHB1. After all, it has never been a PHB1 class in any edition. They mentioned "wild talents," but that's something quite different, harking back to the 1E DMG where there was a small chance for your character to have a random psionic ability.
Oni
First Post
So feats could essentially wind up being an alternate way of learning spells, i.e. smaller spells the wizard knows so well he doesn't have to prep them. I think that could be interesting, if they're not too conservative with it.
The only draw back to this is that there will probably be a hard cap on feats. One thing that always bothered me about the last couple of editions that you only got a pretty conservative number of feat slots but they just kept churning out more and more feats, a lot of them interesting, but because there were so many and you had access to so few most of them were never going to get used.
Knightfall
World of Kulan DM
Oni
First Post
I would much rather there was a mechanism to learn additional feats, i.e. remove the hard cap and treat them sort of how a Wizard can learn new spells. It shouldn't be so easy that you can just pick them up willy nilly, but it should be so that if you want to learn something new you can without having wait until X level or magically forgeting something you already knew. Give all classes the ability to expand laterally, it gives them a good reason to get out there and do stuff.
TwinBahamut
First Post
I do wonder if it is worth renaming the Warlord, though that name certainly is recognizable thanks to 4E. I also prefer it to Marshall, which I've never really liked. I'd be fine with Warlords just being called Lords, since that name has a fair amount of traction in other fantasy stuff that I've seen.
Anyways, I kind of hope we don't see the Illusionist, or any other class that is little more than a Wizard with just a few tweaks made. I'd prefer magical specialists to be given a bit more of their own identity. For example, a Ninja would work way better at the idea of a "master of illusion" class than a boring Illusionist. No class deserves to abuse the Mirror Image spell as much as that one does. It would be appropriate, too, since the lore of the ninja is probably built more on kabuki stage magic tricks than it is on history.
Anyways, I kind of hope we don't see the Illusionist, or any other class that is little more than a Wizard with just a few tweaks made. I'd prefer magical specialists to be given a bit more of their own identity. For example, a Ninja would work way better at the idea of a "master of illusion" class than a boring Illusionist. No class deserves to abuse the Mirror Image spell as much as that one does. It would be appropriate, too, since the lore of the ninja is probably built more on kabuki stage magic tricks than it is on history.
the Jester
Legend
...psst, it was the PH, appendix A.
Huh, could have sworn it was the DMG. I'm sure you're right, though. I only actually played 1E a couple of times.
Jack99
Adventurer
The E-lock had the ability to summon devils, yes. The PHB one, not so much iirc.
Oni
First Post
Well that would explain why I don't really associate summoning the 4E Warlock, though I've perused a few essentials books I had given up 4E for all practical purposes by the time they had hit. Given their ties to other worldly patrons and their propensity for making deals it would have made a great deal of sense, but the implementation was never really there prior, that was instead given to Wizards and Druids and Shamans.
RandomCitizenX
First Post
I know several players in my gaming group who will squee with joy if an alienist summoner concept is supported by whatever is 5e's version of a starpact warlock.
WheresMyD20
First Post
Actually, characters having a random chance of psionic ability goes all the way back to Original D&D Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry.
avin
First Post
While I'm not sure about how pacts were handled in 4E, Warlocks are a damn interesting refreshing change. I'm eager to see 5E's fluff.
As for Warlord it fits perfectly in my imagery of a typical fantasy party.
Fey-elves, or High Elves, or Eladrin are a fantastic concept. My games still have the Great Wheel cosmology, so Eladrins are something different... thus I rename them to High Elves and life moved on.
We need to understand that people play different games. It always has been like that.
For some, it's classical gygax fantasy or die, for some is steampunk, for some is low magic, for some is a desolate Dark Sun, another guys enjoy the vast freedom of Planescape.
We should respect each other preferences, instead of saying X can't be in PHB1 because it's not "core".
As for Warlord it fits perfectly in my imagery of a typical fantasy party.
Fey-elves, or High Elves, or Eladrin are a fantastic concept. My games still have the Great Wheel cosmology, so Eladrins are something different... thus I rename them to High Elves and life moved on.
We need to understand that people play different games. It always has been like that.
For some, it's classical gygax fantasy or die, for some is steampunk, for some is low magic, for some is a desolate Dark Sun, another guys enjoy the vast freedom of Planescape.
We should respect each other preferences, instead of saying X can't be in PHB1 because it's not "core".
Well, it's not THAT simple. The gnome isn't a controversial race; it was only missing from the PHB because AFAIR the 4E design team hadn't nailed down a unique flavor for the gnome. Let's say that 10% of all players want to play an assassin. The problem is that the other 90% might protest that they don't want an evil assassin in their game. So the compromise is to make an assassin that uses the shadow power source -- not that I'm enthused about that, but at least it shows awareness of a balance between inclusion vs majority opinion. (P.S. The seminar transcript indicates that they want to move away from overtly labelled power sources, so I might actually like the 5E assassin, and who knows, maybe I'd like or tolerate the 5E warlord more than the 4E version).
So would I. Though actually, I'm too dignified to squee. Most of the time.
Sammael
Adventurer
Why are assassins necessarily evil, though?
Killing a person in D&D is not an evil act, as long as you are not doing it only for personal gain (or pleasure). As long as you assassinate people in the name of the greater good or because your superiors order you to do it, you're perfectly fine.
What I don't get is why assassins should be a separate class. ANYONE can be an assassin, by definition. Even if we go by the D&D archetype, assassins are just rogues with some minor magical ability (easily simulated through feats or such).
Killing a person in D&D is not an evil act, as long as you are not doing it only for personal gain (or pleasure). As long as you assassinate people in the name of the greater good or because your superiors order you to do it, you're perfectly fine.
What I don't get is why assassins should be a separate class. ANYONE can be an assassin, by definition. Even if we go by the D&D archetype, assassins are just rogues with some minor magical ability (easily simulated through feats or such).
As portrayed in movies, I agree assassins are not necessarily Evil, but AFAIR assassin= evil was always a contention in older editions.
I'm with you on that.
The definition of assassin seems to be a murderer, who kills in a surprise attack for monetary, political and/or religious reasons. I doubt that a majority of PC assassins are being roleplayed that way.
And if you expand the definition of assassin in D&D, I think you might as well say that ALL adventurers are assassins of sorts. They just murder creatures in public spaces that happens to be dungeons.
Yes, but I don't feel so very strongly. I'd be fine with four in core + options to make then feel different. 11 very rigid classes would be much worse in my opinion.
There's probably a middle ground.
