Themes: What's the Catch?

[Klaus]

The explanation I heard was that theme encounter powers are not as strong as normal class encounter powers; they're balanced more like at-will powers in power level. They don't net you much extra power, just give you an extra option once per encounter.

That's not really accurate.

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

Escaped Slave Traits
Secondary Role: Striker
Power Source: Martial
Granted Power: You gain training in the Bluff skill
and you gain the hidden strike power.

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.

 

[shamsael]

Reiterating:
The level 1 theme encounter powers generally deal damage on par with an at-will power but have non-damage effects on par with encounter powers.

The wildcard is that the damage scales up faster than a normal at will power, jumping 2[W] for paragon tier and 3[W] for epic tier, as opposed to an at-will power which usually reaches 2[W] at epic tier.

At heroic tier theme powers simply don't make a character more lethal in combat and at higher tiers there is a small difference which, if it becomes problematic in your game, can be solved by giving monsters an extra encounter power. I don't think dealing 3-5 extra damage at paragon and 6-10 extra damage at epic once per encounter is game breaking, though.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The misinformation is thick in this thread...

A theme is purely additive—you don’t pay anything to select one for your character, other than the opportunity cost of not choosing a different theme. When you pick your theme, you gain an additional 1st-level encounter power. It’s just a bonus: A character with a theme has one more power than a character without a theme.

Having an extra encounter power is a lot like starting at 3rd level … an element of classic Dark Sun that many people remember. The power level of most of the starting theme powers isn’t that much higher than an at-will (some of the effects are better than things we would put on at-wills, but they don’t deal the kind of damage you’d normally associate with an encounter power), but it does form the basis of unusual mechanics around which the entire theme revolves.

Yes, it's power creep. Yes, it helps make Dark Sun special. Yes, the first ability is (supposed to be) not quite as potent as a true encounter power (but probably a bit better than an at-will). That doesn't necessarily apply for higher-level abilities (since you are, after all, giving up an encounter power to get them).

Subscription Needed to Verify.

 

[Kinneus]

It's good old-fashioned power creep. They're planning to bring it to vanilla D&D, too. I say just sit back and enjoy the ride.

 

[Camelot]

The explanation I heard was that theme encounter powers are not as strong as normal class encounter powers; they're balanced more like at-will powers in power level. They don't net you much extra power, just give you an extra option once per encounter.

This would be how I would design them for core D&D, but Dark Sun powers are definitely stronger than at-wills, as has been pointed out by others.

One of the drawbacks I apply (I guess as a houserule) is that if you choose a theme, you cannot gain a background bonus per the Player's Handbook 2. Your skills are less impressive, unless your theme says otherwise.

When they make themes for core D&D, I can see one of three things happening:

1) The feature powers are on par with at-wills, either actually being at-will or being encounter powers that are only as powerful as at-wills. This gives a character more options in a battle, but not necessarily increasing their statistical power. Themes from Dark Sun would be disallowed in a core D&D game.

2) They continue making themes in the same way, but introduce some drawback mechanic that makes it balanced. When playing in Dark Sun, you don't apply this drawback mechanic to compensate for the harsher environment. This would be good, because players could use Dark Sun themes but adapt them for a homebrew game world that's not as harsh as Athas.

3) It's a power creep; deal with it. The monsters got stronger, but now so have the characters. The general themes are the same as the Dark Sun ones with no new drawbacks.

I prefer number 2, but I wouldn't mind number 1. I would be annoyed if they are going with number 3, but I would just sigh, go along with it, and continue having fun.

PS: Maybe as a houserule, you could just increase the price of trail rations to 5 gp per 1 day worth of food and water, like a survival day in Dark Sun.

 

[TarionzCousin]

It's good old-fashioned power creep. They're planning to bring it to vanilla D&D, too. I say just sit back and enjoy the ride.

Some rides can be quite fun.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Nice, TC

The only thing that annoys me about the whole theme thing is the way you're stuck putting your character into a certain theme right from the start. Given that there will be a mechanical benefit to taking one you either box your character into a specific theme right off or you can't do it at all and on top of it you're being mechanically punished. I'd have really preferred if they had no net mechanical benefit, like say all the powers were swaps, and it was possible to pick up a theme during play. This is the nice thing about PPs and EDs, they can grow out of what the character actually DOES. I think it was a bit of an awkward way to implement it from a character development perspective.

 

[RangerWickett]

They do let you switch themes as you level up.

 

[TarionzCousin]

They do let you switch themes as you level up.

Yeah, they do. If you have existing feats or powers dependent upon your theme, you must retrain them first. If not, you simply switch.

 

[The Little Raven]

How soon before we see more official/unofficial themes?

In 2011, in the Champions of the Heroic tier book.