The Gaming Den

From ENworld

Or, as Imban said:

{20:15:14} <@Imban> Uhh, there are no more spell schools, Wizards now use either staves (AoE spells), wands (long-range spells), or orbs (single-target and battlefield control spells), the Wizard spell list has been radically shortened
{20:16:19} <@Imban> Most all Wizards will either do direct damage or use illusions.
{20:16:41} <@Mechalomaniac> No buffs?
{20:16:45} <@Imban> Enchantment (Charm Person, etc.) has been more or less removed from Wizards to give Psionics a place.
{20:16:49} <@Imban> Buffs are for Warlords and Clerics.

and..

{20:176} <@Imban> Also, it seems official - 4e seems like it's removing multiclassing altogether.
{20:17:19} <@Imban> Instead, you take feats called "(Class) Training" that let you have powers from that class.
{20:17:49} <@Imban> Also, Paragon Paths officially are the replacement for Prestige Classes.
{20:17:55} <@Imban> You get one at 11th level and one at 21st level.


If it's broke, remove it outright. No one will care.

Avast, psionics is the new Enchantment?!
Does this apply ta the game flavor too?!
Please let there be Enchanters flavor-wise! By the seven seas, please!

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that flavor-wise, the Enchanter Wizard is pretty much dead. Maybe they'll bring it back as a new class, called Beguiler.

I do have to kind of errata what I said about multiclassing, though - they've been talking about multiclassing being up in the air for a while, so the information that I was talking about (which was from Races & Classes) could well be bullshit. It does seem likely that 4e characters will be single-classed (only) with the ability to dip into other classes' abilities, though.

Its worth going through what the guy who bought the Races and Classes book in hungary actually posted, rather than rely on short summaries like this. And keep in mind his English sucks to the point that somethings are very unclear. Also, several things have changed since that book went to the printers.

For example, he says Enchanted is nerfed for Wizards, rather than outright removed.

There is a lot of questionable stuff (and design decisions that are just flat out stupid) in the 4E decisions, but a lot of people on ENworld are making judgements based on speculation or information that has changed. Or just piss poor interpretations.

Tokorona at [unixtime wrote:1196569026[/unixtime]

{20:176} <@Imban> Also, it seems official - 4e seems like it's removing multiclassing altogether.
{20:17:19} <@Imban> Instead, you take feats called "(Class) Training" that let you have powers from that class.
{20:17:49} <@Imban> Also, Paragon Paths officially are the replacement for Prestige Classes.
{20:17:55} <@Imban> You get one at 11th level and one at 21st level.

The wizard thing I could live with... but this is... ugggghhh... horrible.

Way to go back to 2nd edition.

?? Whats second edition about either of those?
Just the 'removal' of multi-classing? Because changing it into feats (to take out of class abilities) isn't really 2nd edition-like.

and technically, that should be 'can select' paragon paths (11th) and epic destinies (21st).
Not 'get'. Though if they do them in the stupid way they did prestige classes for Saga, it would be suboptimal not to take one.

Voss at [unixtime wrote:1196572948[/unixtime]]?? Whats second edition about either of those?
Just the 'removal' of multi-classing? Because changing it into feats (to take out of class abilities) isn't really 2nd edition-like.

Yeah, the removal of multiclassing. You're now effectively on rails for the entire game once you start at first level. You really don't get many feats, so it's not like you can take too many other abilities. It's actually worse, because at least 2nd edition had fighter/mages. 4E is just going to be a matter of picking your class and being stuck wtih it. You can't make even a warrior mage anymore and that sucks.

Now you're just a mage who lit his feats on fire for a few fighter abilities (but still shit BaB) or a fighter who lit his feats on fire for a few wizard abilities (and no useful spells).

Out of all the 4E info I've heard, this is by far the worst.

To be fair, though, comparing the 4 example feats to the 3 example paladin smites... the feats really suck ass. Also wizard abilities are probably going to *be* spells. They aren't exactly going to be overflowing with choices themselves. The days of swapping out 50+ spells depending on what you'll be facing that day are likely gone.

The design elements for classes are also a little different. Everyone has the same progression (BAB and saves), modified a bit by class choice (so a fighter would have +x to BAB that a wizard doesn't), but apart from that everybody advances at the same rate, unless they pick up class abilities to boost it more.

Its going to have a some rails, but in some ways it should be better. If you're a 9th level fighter and take class training (wizard), you can in theory take a 9th level wizard ability. None of the starting at 1st level shit with the current multi-classing system. And as long as you have a decent INT score, it should synergize just fine. (At least, thats the theory as I understand it). And abilties, at least based on the paladin stuff, scale with level. The smite ability that you took at first level is going to be just as good as the ability you take at 13th.

Personally, I won't miss people multiclassing so much. Most of the time they make stupid decisions and are never level appropriate ever again.

I beg forgiveness from the homosexuals on this board, but odindamn that's the gayest news I've heard all day.

RandomCasualty at [unixtime wrote:1196573305[/unixtime]]

Voss at [unixtime wrote:1196572948[/unixtime]]?? Whats second edition about either of those?
Just the 'removal' of multi-classing? Because changing it into feats (to take out of class abilities) isn't really 2nd edition-like.

It's actually worse, because at least 2nd edition had fighter/mages. 4E is just going to be a matter of picking your class and being stuck wtih it. You can't make even a warrior mage anymore and that sucks.

Now you're just a mage who lit his feats on fire for a few fighter abilities (but still shit BaB) or a fighter who lit his feats on fire for a few wizard abilities (and no useful spells).

Out of all the 4E info I've heard, this is by far the worst.

They explicitly have a warrior/mage class in the PHB.

Not necessarily. There is one on the drawing board, but not necessarily for the PH. A couple paragraphs in the R&C book mention others but, the current class list looks like this-
Fighter
Paladin
Cleric
Warlord
Ranger
Rogue
Wizard
Warlock

Damn, Tokorona, been a while since I saw you post here!
(edit: fuck, lemme rephrase that..)
My two pesos on this: single classed AD&D sucked ass, and the "class kit" expansions for enhancing your traintrack archetype did little to help.

3e multiclassing was well-received by many. To do away with a obviously popular and desired change would be.... unwise.

My guess is that the 4e designers will realize their mistake and change it back in a matter of weeks to a month.
If not.. then their powers of shortsightedness are indeed great.

I'm hoping. I've already come up with potential house rules, so.. yeah.

(And thanks, I've been abit more busy lately than I would have liked, and have more or less stopped gaming to M&M, a system I .. onl;y sorta know)

Well the 4e feats-that-add-mini-class abilities has me excited. I'm tempted to rev up my old (semi-abandoned) classless d20 experiment, but there's too much to do with the Feybook project.
My plan 2 years ago or more was to take everything I liked about D&D d20 and allow characters, on a 1-to-1 intercharacter balance ratio, to pick anything and tack it on.
Problems unraveled like fisting a bucket of worms the deeper I went.
To this day I wonder if Frank and Keith came across the same problems when they first began "fixing" d20.
For instance, the inherent worth of a feat... How many 'character points' is one worth?
What about a simple skill bonus feat?
What about one that grants spells? (or for that matter, how much is spellcastign worth? How does one compare the power of spells numerically??)
What about a scaling feat?
Headaches ensue.

I don't think it's all that large of a leap for them to do away with multiclassing. The current rules for multiclassing are stupid, and the developers are flat-out unwilling to accept the paradigm needed to let that sorcerer/rogue actually work.

Just look at their books, their solution to all of those multi-role archetypes have been to make a core class out of it (hexblade, scout, etc). Some might even realize that a large number of their classes and PrCs are only a couple levels long, and that's got to get under their skin.

Now, in one way, this might be a way to go back the roots of D&D. One thing that supposedly seperates D&D from many other systems is the whole class/level thing. The heavy multiclassing you see in noncasters (or casters with PrCs) is a direction away from this, especially as the bonuses bring you out of the RNG (look at saves). If done well (ha!), this could be seen as a distillation of the game into what made D&D good.

And definitely expect to see more and more core classes as new books come out. Even stuff that would have fit under existing classes.
Illusionists have been mentioned in passing, druids will probably primarily shapeshifters with limited spell capability, various other things like swordmages and whatever concept of the week catches their fancy.

As for 3e multiclassing, however well received it was initially, it doesn't really work well. Yes, you can mix fighter/barb/ranger levels however the hell you want, but thats more because the base classes suck ass. For spellcasters its just a sad little joke.

The current rules for multiclassing are stupid, and the developers are flat-out unwilling to accept the paradigm needed to let that sorcerer/rogue actually work.

This is the key. Allowing a character of 9th level to have a total of 9th level abilities while still having a pile of Rogue and Sorcerer abilities which add up to 9th level worth of whatver is kind of obvious (even if the precise mechanics of how to do that are not), but whenever the idea gets brought up the WotC designers wet themselves. I don't know why. Noone knows why.

But indeed with the basic setup they have right now, there's really no reason to have classes at all - they should just have ability lists. Your number of ability slots, your daily spell slots, your per-combat slots (which should be per 10 minutes slots or something, but whatever), and your level-based numbers should always just be determined by your level.

And then you can safeguard flavor by having some of the bigger abilities in each list require you to spend some of your minor and persistent ability slots elsewhere in the same list. If for some reason you didn't want to allow people to make Knights who could throw a 20+ die fireball once a day, you can slap on requirements that people invest in abilities elsewhere in Fire Magic before they were allowed to walk away with a Fire-based Finishing Move. Although frankly, I have no idea why you would want to do that, because last time I checked they had Death Knights in the AD&D Fiend Folio.

They're holding onto classes and they're trying to throw open the floodgates of options. Those two goals don't work together. And that's why they are bringing in a feat that allows you to cherry pick your next Talent off a different list. It would be an oviously shit deal if it wasn't for the fact that the feats are apparently so shitty that you could seriously just not have any of them and not even care.

-Username17

I waiting for Frank to weigh in on this, but I think that moving the magic from one class to many is a much better way to handle the balance question of magic.

On the other hand, it's the rest of the game which is leaving doubt in my mind if it's worth even considering 4th.

I say this owning all mass produced versions of AD&D.

-Crissa

This is the exact opposite of what they should be doing.

Also, wizards just getting blaster spells and illusion is hilarious. Guess what every wizard ever is going to be?

"You can have the style that sucks ass, and the style that is awesome as long as you know what the spells can do and don't have an unimaginative DM who always says 'no, illusions can't do anything useful, ever'."

Providing you read the book, pick the best ones and don't have such a DM, it's a no-brainer. Illusion was good all throughout 3rd, and possibly before then.

Hell, if big explosions are your thing, Illusion is probably the best for that - make illusions of mile-radius explosions and be done with it, ignoring the "no-one died" aspect.

But they might make damage-dealing relevant. The general idea of what they're doing saddens me though. And I still spit upon the idea of Psionics as anything other than "Psionics: Mind flayers (or Aboleths, or Yuan-ti. Everyone else can fuck right off) have a number of spell-like abilities."

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1196589280[/unixtime]]
This is the key. Allowing a character of 9th level to have a total of 9th level abilities while still having a pile of Rogue and Sorcerer abilities which add up to 9th level worth of whatver is kind of obvious (even if the precise mechanics of how to do that are not), but whenever the idea gets brought up the WotC designers wet themselves. I don't know why. Noone knows why.

I do. Because it's incompatible with the current slot based vancian magic. It means they have to completely dump the magic system and rewrite it from the ground up.

Out of all the sacred cows of D&D, the magic system is probably the one most ingrained in the system, because it's just so much work to redo. There's like an unwritten rule of D&D that you don't touch the magic system. Hell, even the tomes followed it. The one thing they didn't' change was the whole spell system. Even though there are numerous problems with it that quite simply ensure that multiclassing can't work. ever.

But they're a massive behemoth such that rewriting them is a major project.

And yet, they are largely kicking it to the curb. They mentioned early on that only about 20% of wizards power/abilties would come from the vancian system. Lately, there hasn't been anything about it at all. Most of its been focused on the per encounter and at will abilities that all classes are getting.

They'll probably drop vancian entirely, but piddle the idea of keeping it just to sucker the fans into reading 4e stuff.

I always thought the vancian spell system was best for multiclassing.

...At least the slot-and-expense part. But for some reason, getting a wider set of spells to go into the same slots just doesn't fit with those guys.

Even though that's exactly what a plain wizard does.

-Crissa

The "per day abilities" are Vancian essentially. However, once you've put everyone on a Vancian per-day ability diet, there's no reason for these super special finishing moves to be class linked.

If the Wizard can shoot Magic Missiles all day, a Lightning Bolt every encounter, and a giant hellstorm of fire once per day; and the Paladin can smash with religious Zeal all day, Smite every encounter, and drop a divine udgement once per day; there's no fucking reason who you couldn't make a character who smashes with religious Zeal all day, Smites every encounter, and shoots a giant hellstorm of fire once per day. Seriously, no reason at all.

-Username17