Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
Based on the Complete Mage definitions -- which sure do look like early 4E design docs at this point -- I'd say they're both types of controllers.Rechan said:
Wizards now more of a speciality magician
- Thread starter Celebrim
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Malhost Zormaeril
First Post
Celebrim said:
This is an interesting point, and I concede that the class can be conceptually very broad in scope -- considering you allow more than the Core 3. However, in practice, single Fighters cannot have that much flexibility, for the single reason that the number of feats a Fighter possesses is proportional to their character level.
Not so with Wizards' spells. I quote:
So you see, a Wizard has a floor to the number of known spells, but no ceiling. So nothing stops a, say, Elven Wizard from spending a hundred years researching every single spell in the Wizard/Sorcerer list and filling Blessed Books with them. All of the 371 spells in the SRD fit in 1662 pages, or a bit over one and a half Blessed Books... Is it all good?SRD said:
Celebrim said:
Because that's their schtick, I guess. A narrow archetype isn't a sin -- 2e tried to do generic with Fighter/Cleric/Mage/Thief and in a few years Kits appeared. The problem is, "fighter" or "wizard" should go a long way towards describing what the character is; otherwise, it's not a proper archetype, and thus not a proper class.
Celebrim
Legend
akaddk: Your post reads alot like disagreement for the sake of disagreement. Alot of it doesn't make sense.
Did you even read my 5:08 post. I don't deny in the slightest that all the pure spellcasters - Wizard included - are too powerful at around 13th level and higher. Believing that however in no way forces me to think that this suggested solution is the best one or even necessarily that it is an improvement.
Sword? Narrow pool? What are you talking about? There are at least four viable weapon builds for a fighter - more if tone down power attack and give some alternative weapon feat trees. There are thousands of potential feats for building fighters of every sort. Try this. Imagine you are designing a side scrolling fight game along the lines of Street Fighter II or Soulcaliber. Think of all the different fighting styles, body types, and special manuevers you can have. See alot of variation? Now, just invent the feats to match what is in your imagination and try not to churn out anything broken.
In theory, you don't need them. But in practice, there is a point at which what you are trying to achieve becomes sufficiently different from other things in the same class that its easier to break that archetype off and make it a separate class. You end up with some overlap around the edges, but its easier to have a covering space of all archetypes and still be balanced with more classes. But, there is a limit to that. Eventually the number of classes increases to the point where you have alot of overlap, alot of conceptual complexity (which class best achieves the concept I'm going for), and alot of playtesting and balance issues especially if you allow multiclassing. Too many options, and you just can't test everything (this is one of the many problems with PrCs). I don't know how many classes are idea, but if system theory is correct then its somewhere between 5 and 15. Eight is a very good number - the trick is choosing those eight well.
Clearly, the designers are not students of system theory.
Because the fighter doesn't need to be toned down. If anything, it needs to be toned up. All the classes experience exponential increases in power as they level, but in comparison to spellcasters, a fighter's increase in power is almost linear. It's Fighter's had a power curve of O(n^2) + C and Wizards and other spellcasters have a power curve of O(n^3). At some point, the fighter just gets flat left behind even if it has a head start. So I don't need to target the fighter's flexibility or its high level attacks. In fact, I need to increase the fighter's flexibility to achieve balance. I could alternately try to increase a fighter's raw power, but that would move us toward the situation where initiative was a 'save or die' throw - which isn't far from the truth already.
Did you even read my 5:08 post. I don't deny in the slightest that all the pure spellcasters - Wizard included - are too powerful at around 13th level and higher. Believing that however in no way forces me to think that this suggested solution is the best one or even necessarily that it is an improvement.
akaddk said:
Sword? Narrow pool? What are you talking about? There are at least four viable weapon builds for a fighter - more if tone down power attack and give some alternative weapon feat trees. There are thousands of potential feats for building fighters of every sort. Try this. Imagine you are designing a side scrolling fight game along the lines of Street Fighter II or Soulcaliber. Think of all the different fighting styles, body types, and special manuevers you can have. See alot of variation? Now, just invent the feats to match what is in your imagination and try not to churn out anything broken.
In theory, you don't need them. But in practice, there is a point at which what you are trying to achieve becomes sufficiently different from other things in the same class that its easier to break that archetype off and make it a separate class. You end up with some overlap around the edges, but its easier to have a covering space of all archetypes and still be balanced with more classes. But, there is a limit to that. Eventually the number of classes increases to the point where you have alot of overlap, alot of conceptual complexity (which class best achieves the concept I'm going for), and alot of playtesting and balance issues especially if you allow multiclassing. Too many options, and you just can't test everything (this is one of the many problems with PrCs). I don't know how many classes are idea, but if system theory is correct then its somewhere between 5 and 15. Eight is a very good number - the trick is choosing those eight well.
Clearly, the designers are not students of system theory.
Because the fighter doesn't need to be toned down. If anything, it needs to be toned up. All the classes experience exponential increases in power as they level, but in comparison to spellcasters, a fighter's increase in power is almost linear. It's Fighter's had a power curve of O(n^2) + C and Wizards and other spellcasters have a power curve of O(n^3). At some point, the fighter just gets flat left behind even if it has a head start. So I don't need to target the fighter's flexibility or its high level attacks. In fact, I need to increase the fighter's flexibility to achieve balance. I could alternately try to increase a fighter's raw power, but that would move us toward the situation where initiative was a 'save or die' throw - which isn't far from the truth already.
Celebrim
Legend
Malhost Zormaeril said:
Yes, because it isn't the problem. The reason it isn't the problem is Vancian magic. You have to prepare your day's spell list ahead of time. With enough spells, you can optimize yourself for just about any situation. But the bane of a Wizard is the unexpected problem. With the right intelligence, a Wizard beats any single thing except another well-prepared spell caster with a higher initiative. 'Surprised', and a meat-shield often fares better.
The problem isn't the flexibility, its the big game breaking/changing spells with gross absolute effects - teleport, raise dead, any save or 'die' spell, wish, disjunction, freedom of action, mindblank, hero's feast, disentigrate, wall of force, mord's mansion, true-seeing and all the rest of the usual high-level kit (right down to invisibility and flight). The fighter just doesn't get anything to compete with that ever, nor would you necessarily want him too.
At least a partial solution would be toning down some of the big spells that grant perfect immunity or which turn the battle one dice. I have some ideas for how you'd fix the rest of the problem, but I'd like to think them through and right them up at some point before floating them.
No it isn't. A barbarian's schtick is rage. It's getting angry and passionate and defeating his foe with the sheer violence of his hatred of the offence or the offender. The barbarian is a fanatic. And the mechanics of 'fanaticism' (rage, furious movement, ability to ignore injury) works just fine for devotees of a religious cult, elite assault troops of a nation state, or crazed pyschopaths. The 'primitive from a tribal secret warrior society' is just the barbarian's particular flavor of this archetype. All I need is to give the class some flexibility in the choice of some of its skills so as to fit to the desired flavor (wilderness lore for the primitive warrior societies, knowledge religion for the religious fanatics, etc.) and with very little tweaking the same class covers all sorts of different things. Multi-classing and feat selection can take care of the rest.
Likewise, the problem with the ranger is it has _three_ schtick's - hunter PLUS woodsman PLUS divine spellcaster. It's completely mixed up. It really wants to be a multiclassed hunter/(spell-caster of some sort), but the multiclass spellcasting rules suck. Alot of the characters that are archetypal hunters, you can't even do as rangers. But if you designed it right, you could use the same base class for (unmagical) urban bounty hunter, (unmagical) sinister assassin, and (unmagical) rural trapper, and (unmagical) noble king's huntsman. Try doing high level 'favored enemy' classes with those concepts using ranger and watch all the baggage and assumptions pile up. If you wanted to be a magical hunter, multiclass appropriately. Look at all the crappy classes they churned out - various specialist hunters, inquisitors, urban rangers, and on and on - because the ranger was so crappily designed in 3.0 (and basically remained that way in 3.5) they had to churn out 20 speciality classes to cover what you ought to be able to do with one base class and some multiclassing.
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AFGNCAAP
First Post
Well, IMHO....
It's a bad idea. I dislike the core class glut that 3.5 has developed, and it's something I hoped 4E would have eliminated. I can understand that they want to sell books, but I think it'll become a point of complaint for current and future fans down the line. Too many core classes lead to the possibility that key roles that need to be covered may not be covered (such as trapfinding, which required a rogue until rogue-alternative classes were presented in 3.5ed supplements). However, why offer umpteen various versions of the rogue when a more customizable rogue class could do the trick?
Besides, there are 2 potential mechanics that supposedly are in 4E that can be used instead of providing brand new core classes: talents/talent trees, and prestige classes.
Make the core classes flexible enough for a varied build right off the bat using talents & feats, then supplement & augment that with prestige classes that enhance those customizations. And, having a more focused flavor for prestige classes is appropriate, while core classes should have room to work, since there are countless possible variations of the archetypes. Fighters could encompass knights, swashbucklers, barbarians, samurai, soldiers, gladiators, etc.; Mages could encompass sorcerers, warlocks, wizards, illusionists, necromancers, enchanters, alchemists, seers, wu jen, etc.; Rogues could encompass scouts, rangers, ninjas, assassins, thieves, bards, spies, etc.; Priests could incorporate paladins, druids, clerics, adepts, shamans, prophets, healers, monks, sohei, shugenjas, etc.
The same goes for spellcasters. Why stick with the old archetype of armored divine casters and unprotected arcane casters? Or limiting healing to divine magic and artillery magic to arcane casters? Or having distinctions between arcane & divine magic at all?
Just have it be magic, period. Let the DMs decide the flavor text behind it: perhaps the only sort of magic possible is divine magic; or perhaps arcane magic is the only possibility, and the divine grants no magical power; or perhaps it's all psychic power instead of arcane or divine altogether. Or any mix thereof.
It's a bad idea. I dislike the core class glut that 3.5 has developed, and it's something I hoped 4E would have eliminated. I can understand that they want to sell books, but I think it'll become a point of complaint for current and future fans down the line. Too many core classes lead to the possibility that key roles that need to be covered may not be covered (such as trapfinding, which required a rogue until rogue-alternative classes were presented in 3.5ed supplements). However, why offer umpteen various versions of the rogue when a more customizable rogue class could do the trick?
Besides, there are 2 potential mechanics that supposedly are in 4E that can be used instead of providing brand new core classes: talents/talent trees, and prestige classes.
Make the core classes flexible enough for a varied build right off the bat using talents & feats, then supplement & augment that with prestige classes that enhance those customizations. And, having a more focused flavor for prestige classes is appropriate, while core classes should have room to work, since there are countless possible variations of the archetypes. Fighters could encompass knights, swashbucklers, barbarians, samurai, soldiers, gladiators, etc.; Mages could encompass sorcerers, warlocks, wizards, illusionists, necromancers, enchanters, alchemists, seers, wu jen, etc.; Rogues could encompass scouts, rangers, ninjas, assassins, thieves, bards, spies, etc.; Priests could incorporate paladins, druids, clerics, adepts, shamans, prophets, healers, monks, sohei, shugenjas, etc.
The same goes for spellcasters. Why stick with the old archetype of armored divine casters and unprotected arcane casters? Or limiting healing to divine magic and artillery magic to arcane casters? Or having distinctions between arcane & divine magic at all?
Just have it be magic, period. Let the DMs decide the flavor text behind it: perhaps the only sort of magic possible is divine magic; or perhaps arcane magic is the only possibility, and the divine grants no magical power; or perhaps it's all psychic power instead of arcane or divine altogether. Or any mix thereof.
Celebrim
Legend
Cadfan: I almost forgot to respond to you, which would have been completely unfair because I think you gave the smartest strongest response:
I agree that this gets tricky. In theory, a swashbuckler could be trading his armor proficiencies for more skill points. But if that is the case, it suggests that the best base class for a swashbuckler isn't necessarily a fighter. The problem is right now there isn't a good alternative because barbarian and ranger are overloaded with unnecessary flavor and aristocrat wasn't really designed with PC's in mind. However, even within the system as is, there are several things to think about which suggest you might not need two classes.
First, you can just choose to put more points in intelligence. Viola, more skills. Why should a swashbuckler have more skills than a knight anyway? Can't you have smart, sophisticated, refined, chivilric, learned knights? Isn't that the ideal anyway? So you could have smart skillful knights or smart skillful swashbucklers. Everyone is happy. I should point out that knights and swashbucklers belong to the same social niche, just from different time periods in history. Maybe there isn't as much difference there as you think.
You might object that both knights and swashbucklers both have a broad range of skills that you might not want on the ordinary martial class skill list. There are several possiblities there. One, you could widen the skill lists. Two, you could create a feat called 'unusual background' that permenently added 3 non-restricted skills to a classes's class skills (this is what I currently do). For example, you could take a fighter and choose 'Unusual Background: Martial Artist' to add tumble, balance, and move silently to your class list. Now, you can play a eastern styled graceful fighter. Or you could add tumble, diplomacy, and bluff to play a sauve swashbuckler. Whatever. Three, you could give all or some classes a flexible skill package, where they can choose X number of additional skills to reflect thier particular flavor (I do this already in the case of my homebrew 'Fanatic' class, and have considered it for other classes.) And really, if you care about being a skillful fighter, can't you buy Skill Focus?
Now granted, if you force the spending of a general feat, you are losing raw combat power. But fighter's get lots of feats so its not a big hurt in the long run, and more importantly I don't think you should ever get something for nothing. So much of the time I see PrCs and even base classes were the implicit goal of the design was to squeeze in a few more bonus feats and class abilities than you'd get from a base class. I see people wanting to design a 'duelist' or 'swashbuckler' class that has the same combat power of a fighter, the same AC as a fighter, gains the equivalent of the same or more feats than a fighter (only they are preselected and then called class abilities), has more skills than a fighter, AND doesn't have to put up with all the drawbacks of wearing heavy armor like armor check penalties, the fact that its expensive, and the fact its a serious drowning hazard. I think we should agree to a power level and stick to it.
Finally, this at least can in part be solved by multiclassing. You want to play a skillful swashbuckler, then pick up a couple levels of rogue or another skillful class over the course of your career.
I'm not quite sure I understand this one. Could you give an example? Most classes are front-loaded anyway, and the exception to that is spell-casting which already has such a good way to 'fix the problem' that its actually a problem.
But have you screwed up the Barbarian archetype, and is the Barbarian archetype really an archetype? I don't think small access to skill problems are really the best example of what you are trying to get at. I think a better example would be, "Can I play a really skillful character that isn't good at sticking you in the back and twisting it, and if so, what would that character be like?" One of the few things that bothers me about the Rogue (which I think is very well designed) is that it is the only example of a playable high skill non-magical class in core. But I'm not sure that's a failing of the class, so much as a failing of the overall design to fill the right niches.
I don't see this as a bad thing. I think too many of the non-core classes are expressedly 'something for nothing'. This is particularly true of full BAB progession PrC's and full spellcaster level progression PrC's, but generally true of most classes introduced since the core.
Yes, and it's a good one. However, alot of this depends on how you see this archetype of 'ninja'. You see, I tend to think 'ninja' is just Japanese for 'rogue', and anything else you want is particular options for the already flexible class. Just pile a few of the more powerful ones into the rogue special ability options that they can first take at 10th and make the rest general feats. Afterall, much of the class abilities for ninja are perfectly general feats which really don't need to be confined to the ninja. Why can't other classes 'great leap', 'speed climb', take 'atheletics', use poison and what not? Why can't non-ninja rogues have a 'ghost mind' or 'ki dodge'? So yes, I might make the ninja's that appear a little less flexible, but I'll make everyone else more flexible. Take a few levels in 'monk' if that is to your taste, since really the ninja class is more or less rog10/mon10 with some variaty thrown in. Optionally, add one or two additional bonus rogue abilities at high levels to reflect the problem 'mundanes' have staying relevant at high levels. But the main thing I see as a problem with something like 'ninja' is that often the archetype design is trying to get something for nothing. Eastern flavored martial classes in particular have always had a tendency to have more abilities than their western flavored counterpart. It's not hard to line up the two classes and see, 'Heh, ninja is getting just a bit more than rogue.' But 'Rogue' is just english for 'ninja'.
Cadfan said:
I agree that this gets tricky. In theory, a swashbuckler could be trading his armor proficiencies for more skill points. But if that is the case, it suggests that the best base class for a swashbuckler isn't necessarily a fighter. The problem is right now there isn't a good alternative because barbarian and ranger are overloaded with unnecessary flavor and aristocrat wasn't really designed with PC's in mind. However, even within the system as is, there are several things to think about which suggest you might not need two classes.
First, you can just choose to put more points in intelligence. Viola, more skills. Why should a swashbuckler have more skills than a knight anyway? Can't you have smart, sophisticated, refined, chivilric, learned knights? Isn't that the ideal anyway? So you could have smart skillful knights or smart skillful swashbucklers. Everyone is happy. I should point out that knights and swashbucklers belong to the same social niche, just from different time periods in history. Maybe there isn't as much difference there as you think.
You might object that both knights and swashbucklers both have a broad range of skills that you might not want on the ordinary martial class skill list. There are several possiblities there. One, you could widen the skill lists. Two, you could create a feat called 'unusual background' that permenently added 3 non-restricted skills to a classes's class skills (this is what I currently do). For example, you could take a fighter and choose 'Unusual Background: Martial Artist' to add tumble, balance, and move silently to your class list. Now, you can play a eastern styled graceful fighter. Or you could add tumble, diplomacy, and bluff to play a sauve swashbuckler. Whatever. Three, you could give all or some classes a flexible skill package, where they can choose X number of additional skills to reflect thier particular flavor (I do this already in the case of my homebrew 'Fanatic' class, and have considered it for other classes.) And really, if you care about being a skillful fighter, can't you buy Skill Focus?
Now granted, if you force the spending of a general feat, you are losing raw combat power. But fighter's get lots of feats so its not a big hurt in the long run, and more importantly I don't think you should ever get something for nothing. So much of the time I see PrCs and even base classes were the implicit goal of the design was to squeeze in a few more bonus feats and class abilities than you'd get from a base class. I see people wanting to design a 'duelist' or 'swashbuckler' class that has the same combat power of a fighter, the same AC as a fighter, gains the equivalent of the same or more feats than a fighter (only they are preselected and then called class abilities), has more skills than a fighter, AND doesn't have to put up with all the drawbacks of wearing heavy armor like armor check penalties, the fact that its expensive, and the fact its a serious drowning hazard. I think we should agree to a power level and stick to it.
Finally, this at least can in part be solved by multiclassing. You want to play a skillful swashbuckler, then pick up a couple levels of rogue or another skillful class over the course of your career.
I'm not quite sure I understand this one. Could you give an example? Most classes are front-loaded anyway, and the exception to that is spell-casting which already has such a good way to 'fix the problem' that its actually a problem.
But have you screwed up the Barbarian archetype, and is the Barbarian archetype really an archetype? I don't think small access to skill problems are really the best example of what you are trying to get at. I think a better example would be, "Can I play a really skillful character that isn't good at sticking you in the back and twisting it, and if so, what would that character be like?" One of the few things that bothers me about the Rogue (which I think is very well designed) is that it is the only example of a playable high skill non-magical class in core. But I'm not sure that's a failing of the class, so much as a failing of the overall design to fill the right niches.
I don't see this as a bad thing. I think too many of the non-core classes are expressedly 'something for nothing'. This is particularly true of full BAB progession PrC's and full spellcaster level progression PrC's, but generally true of most classes introduced since the core.
Yes, and it's a good one. However, alot of this depends on how you see this archetype of 'ninja'. You see, I tend to think 'ninja' is just Japanese for 'rogue', and anything else you want is particular options for the already flexible class. Just pile a few of the more powerful ones into the rogue special ability options that they can first take at 10th and make the rest general feats. Afterall, much of the class abilities for ninja are perfectly general feats which really don't need to be confined to the ninja. Why can't other classes 'great leap', 'speed climb', take 'atheletics', use poison and what not? Why can't non-ninja rogues have a 'ghost mind' or 'ki dodge'? So yes, I might make the ninja's that appear a little less flexible, but I'll make everyone else more flexible. Take a few levels in 'monk' if that is to your taste, since really the ninja class is more or less rog10/mon10 with some variaty thrown in. Optionally, add one or two additional bonus rogue abilities at high levels to reflect the problem 'mundanes' have staying relevant at high levels. But the main thing I see as a problem with something like 'ninja' is that often the archetype design is trying to get something for nothing. Eastern flavored martial classes in particular have always had a tendency to have more abilities than their western flavored counterpart. It's not hard to line up the two classes and see, 'Heh, ninja is getting just a bit more than rogue.' But 'Rogue' is just english for 'ninja'.
Flobby
Explorer
Gentlegamer said:
I was thinking the same thing. I was hoping that there would be Ilusionist and Necromancer talent trees. Guess not... It just doesn't seem like they need to make a whole different class around the concepts. They don't seem different enough from the wizard. Warlock class? That I understand.
I'm ambivalent about this.
On the one hand, I thought we were getting rid of all the variant base classes and this seems like a step back.
On the other hand though, the Beguiler, the Dread Necromancer and even the maligned Warmage were some of the better base classes released in 3.x
Looking at the beguiler for example, there isn't any way to actually MAKE it a talent tree though, since my understanding of how talent trees work is that they *modify* the class so that two Jedis can look different but there are some underlying common features between these two Jedis.
Unless the SPELLS themselves are a talent tree, I'm not sure one can make a beguiler/DN/warmage into talent trees.
On the one hand, I thought we were getting rid of all the variant base classes and this seems like a step back.
On the other hand though, the Beguiler, the Dread Necromancer and even the maligned Warmage were some of the better base classes released in 3.x
Looking at the beguiler for example, there isn't any way to actually MAKE it a talent tree though, since my understanding of how talent trees work is that they *modify* the class so that two Jedis can look different but there are some underlying common features between these two Jedis.
Unless the SPELLS themselves are a talent tree, I'm not sure one can make a beguiler/DN/warmage into talent trees.
