The vampire starts with just 2 healing surges

[Truename]

I'm having trouble seeing the mechanical problems here. The designers are obviously using the mechanics to promote a certain flavor--something I approve of. They want the vampire to be desperate for blood, which it surely will be.

At the same time, it doesn't seem unbalanced. Assume a typical party only has one leader. That's just two healing surge uses per combat across the whole party, so two surges should be enough for the vampire to get through a combat. (In my campaign, at least, the players almost never use second wind. No dwarves.)

That leaves the question of whether the vampire will have enough surges at the beginning of each combat. Well, the blood-drinking power triggers on a hit, and the vampire gets multiple uses of it. Unless the vampire never hits in a combat, it seems pretty straightforward to me. We also don't know other feats or powers the vampire gets that also help.

The vampire's a bit fragile, but I think he's fragile in a fun way, with flavorful options for mitigating that fragility.

(PS: Aegiri, I respect your usually thoughtful commentary and design knowledge, and I'm bugged by the speed at which you've been jumping to declare previews as 'broken' lately. You don't have the whole picture yet.)

 

[Aegeri]

The problem with the Vampire class is we're shown a house, but we don't see the foundations of that house except for the terrible muddy bog that the house is supposed to be built on. This class has some severe drawbacks and unless the foundations of the house are really solid it's going to collapse pretty easily into the swarmp. Wizards might then go and build a new house on the swamp, but that's no good if you don't learn from why your first house fell over into it in the first place. While it's unlikely that a vampire will go through an encounter never hitting it is possible that it will happen due to circumstance (enemies stun/dominate the vampire, he ends up stuck somewhere) or just poor luck. Remember that the vampire doesn't have to miss all encounter - he can simply miss round one and get hammered into negatives by an unlucky start and be on the back foot an entire adventuring day. So a class like the vampire is swing town: It could be very effective, hitting a lot and managing to be missed so burning surges often to boost their other powers. The problem is the alternative.

When this class fails it's going to fail so dramatically and so badly it probably won't be able to recover. Really, that puts a big burden on the parties resources in surges and in combat healing - assuming the vampire doesn't wind up on 0 surges which is "utterly useless" territory. This isn't terribly hard to end up on with only a couple of very unlucky moments. The other problem comes if the vampire relies on spending surges for its powers to be an effective striker - we don't know this for sure - then it's going to really suck if its desperate for them just for basic healing.

You might think "Well it's fun to play a swingy character" but is it so much fun for anyone else at the table? Varying between "Kind of useful in some circumstances" and "Terrible" isn't really that great a deal for people playing with you.

Really my problem is that if the foundations of these things like the Vampire were sound, I have to wonder why on earth we've not seen them. In the past for many new classes, even those that added fairly complicated new mechanics like the monk and psion we got entire playtests. We could see the logic from the ground up and comment on it. I am not convinced that without a really strong foundation the vampire is going to be a viable class. Right now, given that Wizards have released one of the worst races in HoS, an epic destiny that was absolutely terrible and a bunch of really underwhelming features/powers - I'm not convinced the foundation in this book is good.

I really do hope that Kaomera is correct and that the full class in the book will be a lot better - but the sheer "swing factor" of this class has me extremely worried.

Edit: To be honest, I have been ragging on most of the elements in this book for a long time now and because I've seen so many poor or outright incomprehensible design decisions in it I just assume the worst by default. I would like to be wrong, but the more I see of the book the more I'm 100% certain I am going to really dislike it.

 

[FireLance]

Edit: To be honest, I have been ragging on most of the elements in this book for a long time now and because I've seen so many poor or outright incomprehensible design decisions in it I just assume the worst by default. I would like to be wrong, but the more I see of the book the more I'm 100% certain I am going to really dislike it.

This is probably better discussed at the "balance" thread, but I get the feeling that WotC is slowing moving away from a "balance first" mindset to a "flavor first" mindset. So yes, if you are looking at the new material from a "balance first" perspective, then the design decisions are going to look poor or incomprehensible.

Personally, I think that it's a perfectly fine step to take. The "Classic" PH1 & PH2 are already there for those who favor a "balance first" game. Starting with PH3 and then Essentials, WotC has been making the balance of game slightly looser, in order to deliver mechanics that are more strongly tied to the flavor. At the end of the day, it's a trade-off between balance and flavor, and it's one that I, at least, and quite willing to make because the increase in flavor adds more to the game (for me) than the reduction in balance takes away.

However, it is probably hyperbole to say that the balance has gone out the window. It might have backed towards it a little, but it's still very much in the same room. Again, to me, at least.

 

[Aegeri]

This is probably better discussed at the "balance" thread, but I get the feeling that WotC is slowing moving away from a "balance first" mindset to a "flavor first" mindset. So yes, if you are looking at the new material from a "balance first" perspective, then the design decisions are going to look poor or incomprehensible.

I think it is possible to do both inherently and "Flavor first" is a terrible excuse for poor mechanics. For example the Barbarian changed things a lot at the time when it was announced in PHB2. We may also have got a playtest of it at the time but I can't remember. Especially as it introduced the idea of encounter long daily stances into 4E for attacks. At the time that was just pure bananas as an idea, but it worked well and ragestrike proved an effective mechanic for making those other dailies useful if you had them while raging. You had interesting flavor, big [W] dice mechanically and something that fit with the system.

Throwing out balance and going with some "We're doing this for flavor!!!" excuse is just terrible. It's also - I'm going to get mean here so I do apologize - the lazy easy way out instead of answering hard questions on how to do both effectively (Like how the Monk and Barbarian turned out). Quite frankly, I'm not going to be keen on 4E much longer if future player books feel the need to throw crap onto a wall and hope things stick to it in a manner that kind of works. Thus far in 4E I've had an almost hands off time for near three years. The amount of powers and feats that I've house-ruled has amounted to about six. One of them didn't even manage to get into play because Wizards fixed it before compilation in Dragon (the original succubus - oh boy was that broken).

I'm getting to the point where I'll be happy not to allow any books post-essentials into the game anymore. I'm still going to buy the absolutely fantastic sounding Threats to the Nentir Vale of course and the Shadowfell boxed set sounds equally splendorous. I can totally live without the current obsession with adding infinite options to mages, breaking core design tenants of 4E like adding racial penalties and just how poorly thought out half this stuff seems to be. I cannot fathom they would deliberately try to make the book look this bad in their previews (like the absolutely wretched ED) just to hide away all their best stuff. It's possible, I just don't understand that.

I'll still buy HoS - because it deserves a fair go when all is said and done. But It has to really answer my problems with it in a reasonable manner for me to consider buying any more of the PC options books again - or allowing their content into any of my games.

 

[FireLance]

I'm getting to the point where I'll be happy not to allow any books post-essentials into the game anymore. I'm still going to buy the absolutely fantastic sounding Threats to the Nentir Vale of course and the Shadowfell boxed set sounds equally splendorous. I can totally live without the current obsession with adding infinite options to mages, breaking core design tenants of 4E like adding racial penalties and just how poorly thought out half this stuff seems to be. I cannot fathom they would deliberately try to make the book look this bad in their previews (like the absolutely wretched ED) just to hide away all their best stuff. It's possible, I just don't understand that.

I think it's simply a case of one man's meat is another man's poison. I for one find it quite intriguing that WotC is willing to challenge and ignore its own guidelines in order to experiment with new mechanics. And to my mind, they've probably floated some of the more controversial design decisions to generate discussion and provoke the interest of players who might be jaded with "Classic" 4E.

 

[delericho]

This sounds like a truly woeful idea. Seems like a really quick way to get back the "15 minute adventuring day".

(In fact, I'd say there's an argument for giving characters unlimited surges, with only their quota of Dailies as an impediment on them just proceeding indefinitely.)

This is probably better discussed at the "balance" thread, but I get the feeling that WotC is slowing moving away from a "balance first" mindset to a "flavor first" mindset.

If true, this is yet another Really Bad Idea. You can have flavourful material that also has balanced mechanics.

Plus, if PC options aren't balanced (or close to it), one of two things happens: either it's so good that everyone takes it (in which case, everything else is wasted text), or it's so bad that nobody takes it (in which case, why bother?).

 

[FireLance]

This sounds like a truly woeful idea. Seems like a really quick way to get back the "15 minute adventuring day".

A vampire has two sources of healing surges: enemies (1 to 3/encounter) and allies. In a way, his healing surges scale with the number of encounters he participates in. If the party defender does a good job of keeping enemies off the vampire's back, he might end up with more surges than anyone else in the party, especially at higher levels. When tapping on his allies' healing surges, he will likely target those who would have ended up with excess healing surges at the end of the adventuring day, anyway, so it might not be so significant a drain on party resources.

If true, this is yet another Really Bad Idea. You can have flavourful material that also has balanced mechanics.

Plus, if PC options aren't balanced (or close to it), one of two things happens: either it's so good that everyone takes it (in which case, everything else is wasted text), or it's so bad that nobody takes it (in which case, why bother?).

Flavor first doesn't mean balance is ignored or goes out the window, in much the same way that freedom doesn't mean anarchy.

 

[Aegeri]

Let's have some examples:

The original PHB Wizard (Can choose between a couple of dailies each day, being more flexible than others somewhat)
The Barbarian (Daily Stance Rages, trades additional rages for fixed large [W] damage)
The Monk (With his movement + attack powers)
Psionics (Replacing encounter powers with a power point system - it's not perfect by any means but it works well enough now with the odd wonky power. But then again everything has wonky powers somewhere)

None of these needed to ignore balance to get terrific unique flavor and interesting new mechanics to the game. Why since essentials has the "brains" behind the design of classes been thrown out with the baby AND the bathwater? Classes have been adding interesting new mechanics while still being balanced for several years now. Why are the current designers suddenly incapable of doing this?

And most importantly, why are PCs getting worse and monster design keeps getting better?! There is only ONE conclusion. An anti-PC Illithid has taken over Wizards and is deliberately trying to spite players and give DMs more brutal ways to dispatch them. This is the only logical explanation.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Plus, if PC options aren't balanced (or close to it), one of two things happens: either it's so good that everyone takes it (in which case, everything else is wasted text), or it's so bad that nobody takes it (in which case, why bother?).

I believe there can be both fluff and mechanics, but it is true it is a fine line to walk.

If you are an optimizer and play with optimizers.

If you are not, and do not play with them, this is much less of a problem, and the fine-edge balance is far less difficult.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I hope it is worded that a vampire has always 2 surges and no feat or race feature can change it.
Otherwise it is hard to balance.

I like the design principle for the vampire, but i can understand that this is not for everyone. Calling it a bad design is a bit early.

And the previews of the vampire do show a good concept and good mechanics to back it up. So this time I really can´t see why there are cmplains about not enough info. With powers that we have seen, a level 1 vampire should work...