Tweet gleanings

[ferratus]

Because a player who is not charismatic in real life should not be allowed to play a charismatic character, right?

Yeah, I used to be swayed by the argument. But no amount of charisma based skills is going to make an uncharismatic or socially awkward player less so.

All it seems to do in actual play, is muffle the more outgoing players while the less outgoing players are nudged into making a diplomacy roll.

Why? Well because certain classes in 3e became "talky" classes, and others were prevented from doing so. Rather than let shy or awkward players stay in their comfort zone (and maybe loosen up) they are instead pressured into becoming the face of the party because they have the right class or trained skills.

It is simply unecessary. There is no reason why one class or another should be better at roleplaying and diplomacy than another. Not even the bard, as 4e proved with the mystic and far-sighted oracle bard.

Why not instead let shy and awkward players blossom at their own pace, in their own way? Perhaps with the more socially adept and experienced players showing the way.

 

[Wormwood]

Rob: The last time we were in seattle we were thinking about the cleric, and my big thing with the cleric was getting back to the cleric of 1E that fighst with a mace and shield and gets his party back up. But 2nd edition introduced the other option that is very closely related to your god and had more spell casting. So we're looking at keeping the cleric as this guy who fights and is that classic cleric, but the priest is that guy that is closer to his god, maybe doesn't wear that armor is laying down more divine effects and spells.

Liking this A LOT.

 

[Wormwood]

Bruce: Magic items have always been a part of the game, but with 4th it became part of a player's natural progression so that you would have to pick up items from stores or other places to keep up. One of the negative things that brought up was that it eliminted some of the exploration that was so integral in earlier editions. You no longer had to go questing or searching for that magic item. We want to decouple magic items from character progression so they're not needed, and return that exploration and excitement of finding magic items.

You won't find a bigger 4e fanboy than yours truly, but Bruce's point about 4e magic items really hits home.

Very curious to see if they can put those worms back in the can.

 

[Wormwood]

Multiclassing

Multiclassing:

Rob: We're shooting for the 3E style of multiclassing that makes it easy to multiclass into any other class. It's been on the forefront of our minds when we're doing all this class work.

And the char-op board cheers.

(I kid, I kid)

 

[Wormwood]

High-level

Monte: Addressing the idea that high level play you'll end up with lots of optoins and more abilities, we are definitely looking at the direction we're taking high level play. The idea we're looking at is cashing in a lot of your low level abilities or spells and kind of trade them in for one interesting higher level ability.

1. This may keep the power curve a bit flatter
2. This will be controversial as all hell.

 

[Wormwood]

Power Sources

Rob: We're not going to be using the power sources as keywords or anything any more (probably). You'll still have psionic characters and primal characters for example, but we won't be using those words or jargon to separate things.

Bruce: We really want to get away from jargon that is just there for the sake of the game. For example you might use the word arcane, but a class wouldn't be labeled as an arcane class.

This is a big deal for some people (note Rob's "probably", however).

That said, jargon tends to be more trouble than it's worth. I agree.

 

[Rechan]

(Rob) So the bard may not fight as well, he'll have other powers/spells that would give him a place in the spotlight. Ex: Charm Person

Bugger. I loved having a bard that was useful in a fight.

 

[Wormwood]

Class-disparity (a.k.a. "I'll suck for the first 10 levels, you suck for the rest")

Monte: I don't want any class to have to take longer than any other class to come into it's own. Story wise, I want all the classes to progress at the same rate. So that a third level assassin feels the same as a third level bard in as much as how assassiny or how bardy they feel.

Awesome. Fighters no longer have to look forward to bodyguard duty

 

[Wormwood]

Status Effects

Rob: So talking about things like stun, daze, and immobilzed right? Currently we're in the area that the effect should be relevant to the spell or power. For example there might be a power word stun spell that explains what stun in and goes from there. But we're probably not going to have too many abilities or spells that would do something like that.

So the 3e/4e paradigm (apply one or more conditions from a defined list---eg. stunned, dazed, etc) may be heavily modified.

 

[ferratus]

Bugger. I loved having a bard that was useful in a fight.

This should help:

The bard as example, you may be in a campaign that's going to do more dungon crawling and not have a lot of social. There will be options that you can opt into where you can pick those combat relevant options in place of those social ones.