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What 3 classes will be in the Arcane power book?

Sadrik

First Post
My best guess would be:
Sorcerer (Arcane striker)
Bard (Arcane leader)
Swordmage (Arcane defender)

Illusionist and Necromancer might be considered Arcane too. If feywild is Arcane, and elemental chaos is Arcane too, then Shadowfell could be Arcane too. But it might be three shades of arcane magic.
 

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Rechan

Adventurer
Illusionist is Shadow, I believe. As likely will Necromancer.

I also think the Sorcerer will be a controller. We need SOMEONE to do some sort of controlling beside the wizard.
 

Dunamin

First Post
Wasn't the swordmage supposed to show up as Arcane Defender in Player's Handbook 2? If so, it wouldn't appear in an Arcane Power splat book.
 

ZombieRoboNinja

First Post
Do we even know there will be 3 classes?

Anyway, I'm kinda hoping they'll save bard and sorcerer for the PHB2. But they can dump the swordmage in a splatbook and I won't complain. ;)
 

Sadrik

First Post
Rechan said:
Illusionist is Shadow, I believe. As likely will Necromancer.

I also think the Sorcerer will be a controller. We need SOMEONE to do some sort of controlling beside the wizard.
Agreed, Illusionist and Necromancer would be good for a Shadow power source. But again, I think because they said feywild is linked with arcane I can see shadowfell linked with it too. Not to mention, illusionist and necromancer has been linked with arcane- for ever...

Sorcerer, as I recall, was noted as an "elemental sorcerer", which leads me to believe they will be tied to the elemental chaos. So you might see a fire sorcerer, water sorcerer, air sorcerer, and an earth sorcerer- that would be very cool. And I would be totally fine if were a controller.
 

Khuxan

First Post
ZombieRoboNinja said:
Do we even know there will be 3 classes?

No, that's speculation based on the Complete books. However, it makes sense - especially since people are hungry for bards, sorcerers and swordmages.
 

drothgery

First Post
I said this over in the martial thread, so I'm repeating myself here, but I don't think it's necessary, or even likely, that all of the 'power source' splatbooks will have the same number of classes. Three seem likely for Arcane -- the bard, swordmage, and sorcerer mentioned in the original post -- but I could easily see none in the martial book (depending on how well the PHB martial classes handly archetypes without supernatural powers), and only one in the divine book (some sort of Divine Controller seems indicated, but I'm not sure what it should be).
 

Rechan

Adventurer
Dunamin said:
Wasn't the swordmage supposed to show up as Arcane Defender in Player's Handbook 2? If so, it wouldn't appear in an Arcane Power splat book.
No. I seem to recall Mearls or Perkins (or whoever's developing it) saying that it would be seen soonish after the Core books.
 

MaelStorm

First Post
I would like a lot of WotC stick to a new philosophy and learned from their passed mistakes with 3E.

CORE BOOKS which introduces all that is important and expansion books which further define the material already introduced by those core books. And no new classes in those books, people who are interested in playing a concept not yet introduced by those core books could try to retro engineer new classes before their official releases in a new PHB. But that's life, like the Rolling Stones track -- "You can't get all you want!" -- the 1st year.

What I envision the approach will be:

1st year:

PHB1
With 2-4 classes for each new power sources (which would eliminate entirely the 3 classes per splatbooks of 3E): in this case it seems that it will be Martial, Arcane and Divine.

Martial Power: Expansion Book no new ones
Arcane Power: Expansion Book maybe 1 more: sorcerer
Divine Power: Expansion Book maybe 1 more: ?
As we can see, they seem to emphasized this approach by specifying its a power book. Which will expand further on how this power source work, and what are the links for the classes. Is the ultimate goal of a class is to be the outsource of that power and how they will fulfill their destinies? There is a lot of material that need to be further defined I think but for reason of space they couldn't state every available paragon paths and epic destinies with all their feats and powers for each classes in just the PHB1.

Maybe we will see that approach for the 3 first years. Maybe not. I would just like it if they would be a little bit less secretive about the future of the game. The only reason I see is that it is in a competitive market and they seemed to suffer from the third party companies with loss of sales. It is not that the system was perfect, far from it, but they were loosing big time the last years. The only reason is that they thought the third party would provide only adventures which was not the case, at all! They expanded as much as they could so they could be seen as the one offering the biggest on anything, but they spread so big they lost it completely. Now, they won't make the same mistake twice because the customers will stop trusting WotC entirely and never comes back to D&D, that is what is at stakes, that is why they are so secretive, because its either win or loose big time.

EDIT:
Another reason I see it that way, 30 levels per classes seems to be too big to be defined entirely, so the PHB will touch a bit on the last 20 levels but will focus on a strong Heroic level introduction.

This is all speculation.
 
Last edited:

kolpo

First Post
Bard (arcane controller): They seem to stress their beguiling aspects, that seem me a typical thing for controllers. Wizards control by changing the terrain, bards control by turning enemies in friends or by making them demoralized/insane. Bards shall be controllers who have also some leadership abilities, just like warlocks are striker who also control.
Sorcerer (arcane striker): To prevent sorcerers and wizards from being too similar must they have different roles. Sorcerer have always been more artillery then wizards.
Swordmage(arcane defender): Already revealed
 

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