Why the renaming of classes?

[Xyrlove Woodsoul]

But I thought there were no divine characters in Dark Sun, given that the gods are kaput?


Edit: ooops. After i read more, somebody already pointed this out.

But yeah, when I hear templar, I automatically think of Dark Sun. And I think the name "templar" sounds to exotic for the cleric. I think "priest" would have been way better. I don't care much for the name "weaponmaster," or "marshal" either. I don't mind so much that they did this, I just don't like the names themselves. I just kind of block it all out (from a fluff standpoint).

 

[DNH]

Does anyone know why WotC are systematically renaming all the character classes from earlier books? I mean, Fighter becomes Weaponmaster, Cleric = Templar, Wizard = Mage, and Rogue = Scoundrel. Um, why? Sure, it's only fluff when all is said and done and I can happily ignore it if I want (and I do and I am) but that just makes things difficult when it comes to looking things up.

Anyone?

No-one has yet picked up on my "deliberate mistake" - the Wizard is now known as the Arcanist; the Mage is an Essentials class.

 

[Zaran]

AFAIK, the Tempest would be Fighter(Tempest) - the Weaponmaster is only the PHB1 fighter.

So we have Fighter (Weaponmaster) (or Weaponmaster Fighter ), Fighter (Tempest) , Fighter (Battlerager) , Fighter (Slayer) and Fighter (Knight).

So they should have introduced the new terminology with Martial Power.

This isn't true until they make it so when we pick Weaponmaster in the CB or in the compendium and we do not have further choices of Tempest, Battlerager, Monkeyflinger, etc.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I would have liked to see a rogue (brutal scoundrel) myself.
I would have liked, if the builds actually did anything if you selected them in the Character builder.
I would have liked, that the Character builder lists the subclasses by class, not by role or something...

Lets be honest. As great as the first PHB was. As great as the design was. It was conceptually a mess.

There were thing unified (AEDU design), but there were different approaches of class design:

ranging from: A-shaped, V-shaped (still my favourite), Pre selected at-wills. Thrown together Paladin and Cleric strength charisma wisdom mix...

A clear moving on to 4.5 would have been the best idea:

Presenting a
Greatweapon fighter
Guardian figher
Tempest fighter
Slayer fighter
Knight fighter

etc.

Essentials does a lot. In a good way. But the backwards compatibility is an issue and I hope 5e is actually in development. And I hope it is, what 4e should have been!

 

[Zaphling]

If they are going to build a Essentials Warlord, I think they will be making the 3e Marshal into 4e. Since the 3e marshal was easy to use since it's leader abilities are all reliant on different types of auras instead of powers, although only 1 aura at a time. But I'm not sure why they called the PHB warlord into marshal.

 

[Danzauker]

Personally, I think they've gone about it the wrong way - rather than rename the old builds to fit the model, they should have brought in "super-classes" with new names to group them under. (So instead of Fighter and Weaponmaster/Knight/Slayer, we should have had Warrior and Fighter/Knight/Slayer.) But that's just my opinion...

As much as I'd have liked this, It would have been impossible, because it would have made the PHBs nearly incompatible with the newer material.