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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Blue" data-source="post: 5553812" data-attributes="member: 20564">Why do you take such umbrage at "mechanical"?  The rules are mechanical, they support the games we play.  Their design space are those mechanical rules.I disagree that the DDI themes are on par with race.  I see race and DDI themes as giving some bonuses and usually an encounter power, but races also giving bonuses to stats and having volumes of feat support as well as a bit of PP support.Character development ... ah, this is an interesting point.  Wizards could publish a class with the fluff that it's a fantastic healer, but for mechanics cut-n-paste the rogue.  Could a player create a PC that was a fantastic healer with that class?  No.  Fluff is good, but does not allow you to shape characters in ways the mechanics don't support.  PHB1 even explicitly tells players to reskin their powers to make sense for their character.  Good fluff, really helps with realizing your character as opposed to generic wizard #752.  Still doesn't allow you to swing a sword with the skill of Gandalf without additional mechanical support (say a weapon proficiency feat).Where I'm going with this is that mechanics and concept go hand-in-hand.  There are many important parts of character vision don't interact with the mechanics and so don't need to be modeled by them.  Like your character personality.  Even there there's some touch - the boisterous viking, the mousy rogue, and the high-society socialite probably don't have the same charisma scores and/or skill training in the social skills.Other parts of your character are strongly influenced by the rules.  Those you really need mechanical support in order to accomplish.  Combat is the arch-typical example, even the DMG p42 improv rules are how to integrate the mechanics.Backgrounds became a way to mechanically support more.  Your orphan rogue was raised in a convent and you want the religion skill trained?  A background can give you that option.  A step forward in allowing the player to realize some of the more creative options out there.These themes aren't wrong, they do help with that to some extent just like background do.  But after seeing how well Dark Sun did it, these are underwhelming in how little they do.In DS, I could take just about any character and say that they are a secret agent for the Veiled Alliance.  They know some arcane magic, can know more, and it's generally supported within itself.  To build the same concept with DDI themes, if I took Apprentice Wizard I would get an encounter power, but to continue along those lines I would need to either MC and spend feats or go hybrid.  The first option has a high opportunity cost - it takes away lots of your options to customize because it will eat up lots of feats just to swap powers, the second dilutes your whole class choice.These aren't bad.  If these had come out first it would have been "nifty", and then when the DS themes came out it would have been "awesome!"  But to go from the DS themes that can can stand hand-in-hand with class and race and can really adjust your character mechanics to support your vision for them, to these which are lackluster in comparison.  I was extremely excited that themes were coming out for non-DS, and these were just disappointing.</blockquote>

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