What will "Shadow"s schtick be?

[Jools]

Now that Psionic's schtick has been revealed to be its power point system, what will the upcoming Shadow's schtick be? Or will it not have one at all?

 

[Wepwawet]

Now that Psionic's schtick has been revealed to be its power point system, what will the upcoming Shadow's schtick be? Or will it not have one at all?

Monk is Psionic but doesn't use Power Points.

Flavourwise Psionic is connected to the power of the mind, mechanically I'm not so sure. There are two important things, in my opinion: augmentable powers and power points. But the Monk uses neither (as far as I know)

Back to your question, I think Shadow will have many illusion and concealing powers, and also materializing shadow into objects or creatures, sort of conjuration powers, although not as "real".

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I have been batting ths around all day...and the only thing I am sure of, is I hope they don't try to put stealth into every class becuse it is 'shadow'

 

[Badwe]

I would wager stealth, invisibility, deception/illusion, and teleportation will all be at least minor themes. at least as far as the assassin goes. they're not really clear if the shadow power source is one of hidey-ness or evil/unaligned-ness. For example, would the shadow controller be similar to the warlock? Do infernal and star (or even... DARKNESS) pact warlocks have a place in the shadow power source?

Try to imagine how the role could be filled out. Martial had a lot of emphasis on weapons, divine on radient damage and channel divinity, primal on transformations, arcane tends to all lean towards controller regardless of role. If assassin is the shadow striker, what is the shadow defender? the shadow leader? the shadow controller?

My off-the-top guess on a shadow leader would be lifedrain effects used to benefit allies, or possibly temp hitpoints (which have a much less holy healer-y taste).

 

[CubeKnight]

For a Shadow Leader, I was thinking something along the lines of:

Draining Word * Encounter
Close Burst 5
Target: One enemy in burst
Minor Action, [Stat] vs Fortitude
Effect: One ally in the burst can spend a HS
Hit: 1d6 damage. Your ally gains Temp HP equal to the damage inflicted.

Tho I'm not sure at all if damage has a place in the Leader's healing words...

 

[bganon]

My guess for Shadow is that they'll take the theme of the dark pact warlock a bit further: Shadow classes will have class features that require harming themselves and/or allies to be effective.

 

[Klaus]

IMHO, Shadow will be focused on a lot of things associated with the Shadowfell:

- Darkness
- Illusion
- Cold
- Undead/Necrotic

 

[Aloïsius]

IIRC, there is already a shadow parangon path in the manual of the planes...

 

[Andor]

the Shadow knows...

 

[MarkB]

I'd expect Shadow's "schtick" to be "lots of stuff about shadows in the flavour text".

Really, of all 4e's concepts, the 'power source' seems to be the most nebulous and weakly-defined in both practical and rules terms. There's little beyond flavour text that links any one arcane class to any other, likewise divine, martial and any other we've been shown so far.

It has so little impact on actual gameplay that I'm not sure the concept of Power Sources is even worth maintaining at this point. Simply define each class's flavour text individually, and forget about trying to create themed categorisations that don't have any true overriding characteristics.