Themes: What's the Catch?

[Klaus]

It occurs to me that it would be quite easy to bring themes to default D&D without power-creep -- just exclude the free encounter power, give them a bonus at-will or no bonus at all, and then keep the rest as normal, because to get a theme power you still have to sacrifice one of regular powers.

OR...

If you choose a theme you have the option of trading your racial power for the theme's power.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Thing is, though, many of the Dark Sun monsters are hyper-powerful.

Not really any more powerful than monsters out of the MM3. Dark Sun and standard D&D are meant to be cross-compatible, so I think the themes we see in the DS setting book are largely going to have the same balance as the themes we see outside of it.

If you choose a theme you have the option of trading your racial power for the theme's power.

Man, if that becomes the case, why even bother choosing a race anymore?

"Here, you get +2 to your Primary Ability score. That's your race."

Heck, maybe we don't need races anymore. Just make them all Themes. "I have the Dwarf theme" instead of "I have the Dwarf race."

FFZ does something not entirely different with Archetypes and Tribes.

 

[Holy Bovine]

Man, if that becomes the case, why even bother choosing a race anymore?

"Here, you get +2 to your Primary Ability score. That's your race."

Heck, maybe we don't need races anymore. Just make them all Themes. "I have the Dwarf theme" instead of "I have the Dwarf race."

FFZ does something not entirely different with Archetypes and Tribes.

So the skill bonuses, defense bonuses, extra surges/feats/powers, different resting cycles etc are all meaningless in the face of a single racial power? I'll have to say I disagree 100% with that. I know you may be just playing devil's advocate here but to ignore all of the other things races add to a character in simple game mechanics (ignoring the RP aspects entirely) seems a little silly to me.

 

[Holy Bovine]

The catch is you're stuck on Athas.

No kidding! I love the idea behind not only themes but the Wild Talents as well. Given that a player from one of my groups is going to be running Dark Sun soon and was concerned that the lethality of the setting might overwhelm the PCs the themes and talents seem tailor made to provide that little extra bit of umph to keep PCs alive. Dark Sun is looking more and more like the setting I want to play and DM in. Odd given that I barely looked at it back in the 90s.

 

[I'm A Banana]

So the skill bonuses, defense bonuses, extra surges/feats/powers, different resting cycles etc are all meaningless in the face of a single racial power? I'll have to say I disagree 100% with that. I know you may be just playing devil's advocate here but to ignore all of the other things races add to a character in simple game mechanics (ignoring the RP aspects entirely) seems a little silly to me.

If I'm coming at this from the RP aspect, then it matters absolutely 0%. I could take a human and play him like a halfling, or a drow, or a thri-kreen, or a two-headed gigas pixie, or a beholder, or whatever. In 4e, the mechanics and the story are pretty well divorced from each other. I don't need to be able to write down "dwarf" to play a dwarf.

If I'm coming at this from a mechanical perspective, it's all pretty much a wash. Skill bonuses aren't very useful (take a background! Skill challenges let you use your best skills anyway!), defense bonuses are only there to cover up mechanical gaps, different resting cycles are pure flavor, and the little extra boost some potential other feature gives me is, also, largely flavor.

If I'm coming at this from a "race is an important point for D&D characcters" perspective, I actually really like the idea of using races as themes, because themes remain relevant over the course of an entire adventuring career, and races, as they are now, become more and more obsolete as you get more and better encounter powers and more and better feats. It's like getting 10 racial powers instead of 1. Which is kind of a big deal.

And, in the end, I don't think the basic rules of Themes will change when they're ported over to the core setting. Dark Sun may seem tougher, but it's supposed to be cross-compatible. I'm supposed to be able to grab a monster from the monster book and use it in my homebrew setting without a problem, and I'm supposed to be able to pick up a new build or class and use it in Dark Sun without any issues, either. The extra boost Themes grant you isn't supposed to be there because Dark Sun is somehow a "higher difficulty level" in anything other than flavor.

So I don't think they'll replace your racial powers.

But I do think that your race should be a more important thing, like your theme already is. And I could see the idea of making your race your theme, I just don't see (right now) how you'd do both.

 

[Klaus]

If I'm coming at this from the RP aspect, then it matters absolutely 0%. I could take a human and play him like a halfling, or a drow, or a thri-kreen, or a two-headed gigas pixie, or a beholder, or whatever. In 4e, the mechanics and the story are pretty well divorced from each other. I don't need to be able to write down "dwarf" to play a dwarf.

If I'm coming at this from a mechanical perspective, it's all pretty much a wash. Skill bonuses aren't very useful (take a background! Skill challenges let you use your best skills anyway!), defense bonuses are only there to cover up mechanical gaps, different resting cycles are pure flavor, and the little extra boost some potential other feature gives me is, also, largely flavor.

If I'm coming at this from a "race is an important point for D&D characcters" perspective, I actually really like the idea of using races as themes, because themes remain relevant over the course of an entire adventuring career, and races, as they are now, become more and more obsolete as you get more and better encounter powers and more and better feats. It's like getting 10 racial powers instead of 1. Which is kind of a big deal.

And, in the end, I don't think the basic rules of Themes will change when they're ported over to the core setting. Dark Sun may seem tougher, but it's supposed to be cross-compatible. I'm supposed to be able to grab a monster from the monster book and use it in my homebrew setting without a problem, and I'm supposed to be able to pick up a new build or class and use it in Dark Sun without any issues, either. The extra boost Themes grant you isn't supposed to be there because Dark Sun is somehow a "higher difficulty level" in anything other than flavor.

So I don't think they'll replace your racial powers.

But I do think that your race should be a more important thing, like your theme already is. And I could see the idea of making your race your theme, I just don't see (right now) how you'd do both.

I'd love to see future products introducing higher level "racial powers".

 

[Camelot]

I'd love to see future products introducing higher level "racial powers".

I want to see more tradeoff options, like we've seen in Dragon. There were the abyssal genasi, and dragonborn got an option to have an effect similar to a dragon's frightful presence that they could switch their dragon breath for, which I thought filled in a great niche of having dragonborn be not only strong, but charismatic.

 

[Vartan]

That's not really accurate.

For instance, Dragon had the Escaped Slave theme this month. If you choose it you get:



The Hidden Strike power is an encounter free action that triggers when you make an attack. Roll Bluff vs. Passive Insight of observing creatures. If you succeed, they think the attack came from somewhere else and treat you as *invisible* until the start of your next turn.

A Bluff-based one-round invisibility is very good, specially for rogues.

That is pretty strong. I like the RP potential for that theme and its power, so I can handle its relative power.

I haven't played or run 4E Dark Sun, and I don't know the extent (if any) to which the designers tried to emulate the difficulty level of 2E Dark Sun, but based on the setting's reputation and the technical sophistication of longtime 4E players I think Dark Sun DMs will throw the kitchen sink at their group.

 

[Old Gumphrey]

Don't get me wrong, I really love what they are trying to do here. It adds a nice amount of flavor.

But...as-written, these things are costing a feat at my house. I'm honestly surprised at how little complaining there is about it. I mean, you're getting a free scaling encounter power, and then you get to swap out any of your class powers from the theme's list, also for free? I guess it isn't as widespread panic yet since it's only in Dark Sun and DMs feel no need whatsoever to include it in their games. I guess we'll be revisiting this in 2011.

Points of reference:

Skill Power - costs a feat, and that's just a skill utility, not a scaling encounter attack power
Swapping class powers out - costs a feat, and has prerequisites

 

[Dice4Hire]

D
Skill Power - costs a feat, and that's just a skill utility, not a scaling encounter attack power
Swapping class powers out - costs a feat, and has prerequisites

You can switch utilities for skill powers for free.

The feat is for an extra power.