Kobold Avenger
Legend
With all the different books such as Expanded Psionics Handbook, Magic of Incarnum, Tome of Magic, Races of Eberron, Complete Arcane, Complete Mage, Complete Psionics, Player's Handbook II, Tome of Battle, and many other books it seems like they're experimental with ways to change the magic system for 4e.
Granted I think in the core book they're going to try to keep it relatively simple, but allow room for expansion and more options without breaking the system too much to sell more books...
Things I noticed:
-Changes to how magic is been done, psionics is perhaps one of the first examples trying out power points, but they went further with incarnum, the warlock, and tome of magic.
-Themed or specialized spell lists (warmage, beguiler, dread necromancer), they realized that for a lot of classes the power lies in what they can get for spells. Maybe they'll try to use differences of domains or mantles to carry that farther as well.
-Repeatable unlimited use magic tricks. The warlock being the main example, with reserve feats being the next. I think they realized that some players are tired of having their characters run out of spells early.
-The possibility that it might be more fun that magic's for everyone. Tome of Battle effectively giving fighting characters 'spells', because face it using maneuvers is often more interesting than just, "I attack". Of course this might mean that some feats might become maneuvers.
-Psionic Focus, Stances, Combat Focus and more type abilities. It seems like they're toying around with special ongoing conditions that give modifiers. It could lead to a new model of how some spells work, and new types of abilities. Some spells also behave like gaining and expending psionic focus from Complete Mage and one of the Eberron supplements, where you gain some long-lasting constant effect, but can choose to do something more powerful by ending that effect.
-Combination spells, Complete Mage had a bunch of these. It seems like they want to push spell combos which stack up for special effects.
-Chanelled spells and psionic augmentation. I think they realized they simply don't want to deal with to much lesser and greater versions of the same spell.
My prediction is that there's going to be some sort of centralized casting mechanic, and then theme modifiers such as arcane, divine, psionic, song, martial and so on, that'll effect how the spells are cast and work in certain ways.
They might try to throw in things like magic rating from Unearthed Arcana, and maybe have a mechanic called 'potency' for things like spell damage dice.
Granted I think in the core book they're going to try to keep it relatively simple, but allow room for expansion and more options without breaking the system too much to sell more books...
Things I noticed:
-Changes to how magic is been done, psionics is perhaps one of the first examples trying out power points, but they went further with incarnum, the warlock, and tome of magic.
-Themed or specialized spell lists (warmage, beguiler, dread necromancer), they realized that for a lot of classes the power lies in what they can get for spells. Maybe they'll try to use differences of domains or mantles to carry that farther as well.
-Repeatable unlimited use magic tricks. The warlock being the main example, with reserve feats being the next. I think they realized that some players are tired of having their characters run out of spells early.
-The possibility that it might be more fun that magic's for everyone. Tome of Battle effectively giving fighting characters 'spells', because face it using maneuvers is often more interesting than just, "I attack". Of course this might mean that some feats might become maneuvers.
-Psionic Focus, Stances, Combat Focus and more type abilities. It seems like they're toying around with special ongoing conditions that give modifiers. It could lead to a new model of how some spells work, and new types of abilities. Some spells also behave like gaining and expending psionic focus from Complete Mage and one of the Eberron supplements, where you gain some long-lasting constant effect, but can choose to do something more powerful by ending that effect.
-Combination spells, Complete Mage had a bunch of these. It seems like they want to push spell combos which stack up for special effects.
-Chanelled spells and psionic augmentation. I think they realized they simply don't want to deal with to much lesser and greater versions of the same spell.
My prediction is that there's going to be some sort of centralized casting mechanic, and then theme modifiers such as arcane, divine, psionic, song, martial and so on, that'll effect how the spells are cast and work in certain ways.
They might try to throw in things like magic rating from Unearthed Arcana, and maybe have a mechanic called 'potency' for things like spell damage dice.
