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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5553978" data-attributes="member: 82106">It is the resistance that is interesting, and if you simply make a feat to get around that, like most of the other types have some such mechanism, then it ends up pretty much just like the other types. By this philosophy why bother with damage types at all? They are reduced to nothing but fluff. Every character that does typed damage simply takes whatever feat/power/feature/whatever that nullifies the corresponding resistance and you have reduced it all to triviality. Sorry, that's exactly the wrong direction to be going in. I don't advocate going TOO far in the other direction either, lest we have the 3.x rogue problem, but we've already discussed that, and HoS does provide usable support for dealing with that. This is an area however where 4e design can fall down on itself because poaching is relatively easy in a lot of cases. It would be interesting to have a necromancer feature which is exceptionally potent against undead and deals with their necrotic resistance or does something more interesting, but if any old wizard can pick it up then the specialness is again lost. This is one area where class features are actually a good thing, it is possible to make something the exclusive territory of a very specific class/build/subclass. Vampires are perfectly playable. I have compared character builds for vampire to other builds of other classes which are actually in play in games I run/have run. They stack up reasonably well. It isn't necessary for them to be exactly on a par with some super-optimized bow ranger. If you insist on that, then don't play a vampire because a flavorless vampire that doesn't achieve its concept merely because some designer insists that you can make a bazillion DPR build of it is fail. I think vampire is in many ways not a great example either because it is both a very strong and specific concept and a brand-new class that has yet to receive the kind of in-depth support many other classes have. HoS is filled with a lot of very niche concepts that need to have much stronger conceptual bounds than something like 'fighter'.I disagree. Alchemist is power creep? Animal Master is power creep? I don't really see it that way. Sure, you CAN make a theme that is overpowered, and MAYBE it is easier to do it with the DDI themes. We've all been over Order Adept. It has a problem, nobody is arguing against that. Alchemist and Animal Master OTOH are excellent flavor with just enough mechanics to do the job. Excess mechanics aren't needed. Animal Master is a peculiar case too. Having a small trained pet animal is just not something with a huge scope IMHO. As it stands it is a hugely useful thing outside of pure combat situations. How really would you deal with dying animals? Seriously? Without yet again kicking concept to the curb and creating some awkward mechanical kludge? Play the thing in the kind of style of game where it is a nice boon, like a game centered on intrigue. Bringing your pet cat into The World's Largest Dungeon? Probably not really a super clever idea. Remember, any PC can have a pet without needing a theme. You just leave the pet safe at home and pick some other theme. Nobody is arguing that mechanics don't need to provide reasonable support for the concept. The problem is that concept has to come first, or you simply have a game of soulless numbers, which is EXACTLY what 4e is accused of on a regular basis (and there's an entire community of people off playing PF who mostly agree with that). So yeah, I'm sorry, I demand that my game provide strong concept and then cloak that concept in reasonable mechanics which allow it to play out at the table. Mechanics first failed. Half the people that used to play D&D went away and largely because of that mistake. Look at the history of RPGs. I've been playing them since day one and the ones that survive and continue have strong concept. Many of those survivors also have had crappy mechanics, and yet they continue to be perennial favorites. I want good mechanics, I will not accept lack of good concept, period. I think WotC has finally figured that out. There's no decline in quality of material in 4e. Quite the opposite, the game is finally flowering.</blockquote>

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