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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aegeri" data-source="post: 5305053" data-attributes="member: 78116">To be honest the drama some are making over this doesn't match how effective themes are in practice. They have the most dramatic effect at level 1 (duh) and rapidly drop off in significance. The power increase at heroic is noticeable yes, but they don't give you any more than an additional encounter power and balance out pretty evenly. Parties with themes have an additional neat option, but aren't significantly more powerful than a party without a theme by epic (where you'd expect that power creep to really hit if it was). In fact what I've noticed is that a theme makes lower level heroic tier battles more fun. It delays the "at-will" spam fest in many combats and means you can do a little more, like level 1 solo battles (I playtested a certain level 1 solo in my new Dark Sun game I am writing).I do agree that this kind of power creep can get rapidly imbalanced and concerning if it's stacked on top of more elements. For example, if they make a background path that adds another encounter power or whatever else. At the moment, themes are a neat new option that doesn't imbalance anything that I can see at all (an extra encounter at level 1 makes heroic more fun IMO actually). It is entirely at the DMs discretion to use anyway and a character will suffer at first if they don't take one: but by the end of heroic tier it's a minor increase in effectiveness - not something that requires the DM to throw more monsters at the party (seriously, has anyone even tried playing with themed vs. unthemed parties? They are nowhere NEAR that mechanically ridiculous).In the end 1 power is not worth the running around screaming that the power creep sky if falling. When they add more powers through backgrounds, free feats or something that bloats a PC into getting an additional 3+ encounters, dailies and this all stacks on top of themes we have a major problem.At the moment we have a cool, balanced and not game breaking addition to 4E. Hell, I think levels 1-3 play far better with themes than without. The 2 games I've playtested with themes work out to be more fun at those really low heroic levels than my current IRL game (that is going to hit level 4 next week) did. They don't break the game at high levels and they reduce at-will spam fests in hardish early heroic tier encounters. Both of these argue that themes are a good new mechanic.The only complaint you've made I see any real merit to is that there aren't enough themes to suit a variety of players. That I firmly agree with and I can't wait for the "core" themes to be added to the game.One thing though:Adding grind isn't required, they turn out to be a balanced and easily insertable element into 4E. It's just his idea and it would probably even work, but you act as if this is something that has to be done like we've determined they are imbalanced: As far as I've seen they aren't. I built both my upcoming new campaigns with themes in mind the same as I built my current IRL game. The games with themes just feel more fun in heroic and less grindy - but certainly not imbalanced or requiring the DM to throw in an extra monster. If you must know, my Dark Sun game TPKed both the theme and non-themed parties and took a lot of adjusting. The same adjusted encounters were a little less problematic for the party with themes - but bear in mind that is expected - but ultimately still very challenging for either group. What I did notice? The themed party were less reliant on pure dumb luck at level 1, having the extra encounter adds a solid "back up" option. It helps manage party resources more and reduced grind: But it didn't trivialize my encounters whatsoever. That's a success in my book.Maybe I didn't see something game breaking when playtesting the early heroic, late paragon and late epic PCs that I built to model my parties in those games, but I didn't feel 1 theme encounter power broke anything anywhere. I felt the early heroic tier was more fun and I can't wait to see if my PCs feel the same!</blockquote>

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