Craze's page

I'd like to see more musical abilities for the bard, even if that would mean less spells. I never saw the bard as a real spellcaster anyway - the bardic music was the real point of the class to me.

Basically anything has been said by now about if bards suck or not. I like them very much - favorite class and all - and they are a favorite among most of my players too. The basic concept of a bard is IMHO very classic fantasy.

I agree that they need to be re-vamped, but I'd like to see more musical abilities, not less.

For Indiana-Jones-style all-round adventurers, there's the Factotum class. Bard have their special role and its centered around social interaction, music and inspiration. From my experience, they make great party leaders. In the right hands, of course.
I would be disappointed if the Pathfinder Bard would be more jack-of-all-trades and less Minstrel.

I had a lot of good experiences with PC drow, both from a DM's perspective and as a player. My favorite (still running) drow char is an assassin who stumbled per unfortunate happenstance into the role of a hero and wasn't all too thrilled about it. Traveling with the party and bound to their fate he began using the situation to his advantage and is slowly, slowly understanding what it means to be "good", without actually noticing it.

I had player groups playing evil drow. I had groups playing good drow. And I most certainly have at least one drow in every FR adventure I run.
Sure, I had a lot of bad experiences with drow characters too - but that is true for every race/class in the game.

Considering how popular they are as player characters (which is true, no matter how much this angers some people, for reasons I cannot fathom), it seems to be about time to add them permanently to the core races.
Of course, they would need to lose some of their powers to bring them around a LA+0. Racial Feats or Levels seem to be a good way of saving some of their abilities.

But then again - they are not truly "core". I disagree that they should always be portrayed as evil, evil, evil villains who are born thoroughly evil without any hope of redemption (what kind of depressing message is that?), but they seem somehow misplaced without a strong story connecting them to the setting. Everyone thinks about the Realms when it comes to drow, but Eberron, for example, has a very interesting take on them, that differs from their default version without making them any less drow. Yet they make hardly good standard PCs (intriguing ones, yes, but not basic).

Still, although drow are probably my favorite characters and villains and I have lots of fond memories of Underdark-based adventures, they are part of the setting. If Pathfinder has a strong role for drow that is beyond the eternal villain, then they should be core PCs by all means. If not, they're better off as optional characters.
Basically, you can play anything you want, if your DM allows it and thinks it appropriate for the campaign. But core races should be something that's always OK, no matter what kind of adventure you're planning to run (exotic exceptions aside). No matter how you look at it - that is not exactly a role where the drow excel.
I can think of *many* problems that arise from playing a drow, and plot-relevant reasons are on the end of that list.
No beginner, for example, could play a drow. You'd have to understand the elves first and the special role the drow play in the setting. That's a really bad start for a *core* race.

So, I think they should be a playable race, but I don't think they should be part of the core races.

Greetings,

My first reaction to the 4E announcement was total excitement. There were a lot of things that needed updating in v3.5, IMHO. I thought about SW Saga and thought, "well, something along that lines would be really nice". I actually like the Saga ruleset.

Then I heard "no Bard, no Druid" and it was like "WTF?!" - these are the staple classes of each and every 3E D&D group I've played with so far. There is always a bard or a druid - or both. I knew by then I couldn't get my players to switch to 4E, no matter how cool it turns out to be. So, OK, they are supposed to be released with a later addition to the new PHB, but still...

It's a clever move, though: Almost anyone would possibly buy this book to get a complete D&D again. This felt wrong, somehow - of course, they want and need to make money with this game, but this seemed to be a little *too* obvious for my taste.
And the new classes? They put in the Warlock and Warlord - I can already tell what kind of phonetic confusion that will create among newbies. And to be honest, the Warlord is AFAIK just an inflated version of the Marshal (way cooler sounding name, btw). This is what we get for losing Bards and Druids? Huh.

And don't get me started about the FR update - Helm is dead? :( That was like a punch in the face.

Yet still I held the 4E banner up and hoped for the best. But with the previews and the fate of the Tiefling and Eladrin, it dawned to me, that this game won't be a new edition, it is a whole new game. It may use some labels from D&D, but it is actually something completely different.
That's not necessarily bad, but not the D&D my players and I have enjoyed over so many years. The WoW-style* Fluff killed my excitement with 4E, even more than the glimpses of the new rules did later on. I agree that 3.5 needs serious repairs, but that's what houserules are for - 4E is like razing a really nice but neglected building, where a new paintjob and some plumbing would have sufficed, and building a mall in its place.
(*btw, I do like the WoW d20 RPG)

I'm totally for simpler rules and easy character generation, but, for me at least, they overdid it. I already get nervous twitches when someone ingame says "attack of opportunity!" or "5-foot step" so I sure as hell don't want to hear every range described in squares.
"Have you seen this shady fellow, 8 squares over there?"
"Yes, I was able to get a good look when he passed by within a square, a moment ago."
Say what you want, but this'll happen. Sooner or later gamers will get too lazy to calculate any real distance into squares and back.

So, my players and I are sticking with 3.5 and, recently, Pathfinder. The 4E may be a cool game in its own right, but I think it is not really going to be "D&D". Maybe there will be a more mature, later version of this new D&D that will catch my fancy but by now I seriously doubt that it will replace the game we'll get with Pathfinder.