It's compatible if it doesn't change existing characters. Elves (at present) are +2 Wis, +2 Dex. If that was changed to +2 Dex, +2 Wis or Cha, then that doesn't make existing characters wrong at all.
Cheers!
The Essentials Human (wild mass guessing)
- Thread starter mkill
- Start date
It's compatible if it doesn't change existing characters. Elves (at present) are +2 Wis, +2 Dex. If that was changed to +2 Dex, +2 Wis or Cha, then that doesn't make existing characters wrong at all.
Cheers!
No, they definitely won't do that. Giving humans anything but a bonus of +2 to a single stat of their choice would introduce incompatibility between Essentials humans and PHB humans, and such an increase in power is not warranted by the slight increase in flexibility being granted to the other races.
Humans remain more flexible that any other race -- they can theoretically have a starting value of 20 in any single stat. The non-human races, after the ability score updates, will only be able to do that with one of three stats.
Charwoman Gene
Adventurer
Yeah I could have been clearer...
The PHB Races will probably get errata at the same time. I think this falls under, "We don't want Essentials to make any changes to the game we weren't planning on already making" - there has been speculation about them giving errata like this since long before Essentials was on the table.
And the nice thing here is that it doesn't actually cause any problems for existing characters. If dwarves were previously +Con and +Wis, and now become +Con and +Wis or +Str, your existing dwarven characters remain completely legal.
In this case, though, it wouldn't be a change to humans as much as a clarification how their ability works with classes that don't get standard At-Will distribution. Just like they did with Psionics, basically - there is precedent, and it doesn't break the game to adjust things in that fashion.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
I think it falls under people fondly desire certain things to be true that haven't even been hinted at. I sure detected no trace of any suggestion that existing races are going to change.
Sure, existing CHARACTERS are compatible, but I would point out that they'd be compatible regardless in the sense that their math would still work even if you could no longer make that character, so the definition of compatibility makes all the difference. The problem is that a dwarf that can take +STR/+CON is NOT really compatible with the bulk of the rest of 4e because it simply becomes an enormously better choice as a fighter than any other race considering that things like DWT (and just general dwarf race features) already make them excellent choices.
This illustrates the whole silliness of the concept of tweaking the races so they are 'good at more classes'. Any tweak you make is simply at best going to slightly modify WHICH race is best for class x, y, or z. One or another of them will always have a slight mechanical edge, nothing logically is going to change that. In fact the suggested +STR/WIS mod to dwarves makes things WORSE because they are now hands down better fighters and illustrates another point, which is that this change won't actually make a lot of difference in who is best at what since it is largely already corresponding to typical racial stereotypes and the stat bonuses also fit those. Its a zero-win concept and only serves to create power creep.
Personally I don't think the devs are that unclever.
Elven rangers are really good. That doesn't mean only elven rangers exist. Dwarven fighters with a strength boost would be effective, definitely, but they wouldn't remotely break the game.
I think you are vastly overestimating how much power creep there would be compared to the various effective builds already out there.
Anyway, no the designers have not outright indicated this ability score changes will happen. But there have been indications and it seems a likely extension of the current design philosophy. You can predict that it will cause all sorts of issues with game balance - but we heard the same thing about the PHB2 classes and races, and the PHB3 classes and races, and all the various options from the Power source supplements. No breakdown of the game has yet occured.
Mapache
Explorer
Right, adding alternate stat adjustments is almost guaranteed, and options in place of current abilities is quite likely. Something like "Humans can take a third at-will or X, and Half-Elves can take a diletante power or Y."
What they're not going to do is take away everything. Races will not be just the existing stat modifiers with nothing else, because then you have "You can take stat modifiers, or stat modifiers plus a bunch of good stuff." Essentials is supposed to provide options that can stand alongside existing material, not crippled beginner options to be discarded as soon as you look at the Character Builder and realize there's strictly better options.
The speculation on the human just got new fuel. It could be that erf_beto was right on the money, and they get a racial power!
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Hargan also had a really cool human racial power called Heroic Effort. It's an encounter power that requires no action.
Trigger: You miss with an attack or fail a saving throw.
Effect: You gain a +4 racial bonus to the attack roll or the saving throw.
It could be that humans get no less than a complete rewrite, with two +2, a racial power, and a reduced list of other abilities (the bonus at-will and the defense bonus might be out and gone...)
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Hargan also had a really cool human racial power called Heroic Effort. It's an encounter power that requires no action.
Trigger: You miss with an attack or fail a saving throw.
Effect: You gain a +4 racial bonus to the attack roll or the saving throw.
It could be that humans get no less than a complete rewrite, with two +2, a racial power, and a reduced list of other abilities (the bonus at-will and the defense bonus might be out and gone...)
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