WotC's Nightmare's page

I can't wait to see the respectable Nambla NPC and the respectable druid and its "companion".

Ok, I'm being a little flippant here. ;)

But anyone ever read Elfquest? Does the idea of a druid having relations with their "companion" really seem so far fetched in a fantasy setting? And the talk about the Greeks and homosexuality, often in a positive light, too often sounds like support for the ideas of Nambla. Not to mention the exploitation of underlings by their superiors. I don't think anyone pushing for respect for homosexuals should ever by pointing to the Greeks and their exploitation of young men as a good thing.

Frankly I don't really care about if their are homosexual characters or not, though I would say that the fact that the only group that has been bothered by it in Pathfinder series was a immoral family is a bit disturbing. To me that shows there is not a very balanced view on this issue. It also indicates, perhaps subconsciously, that one can't be opposed to homosexual behaviour (whether done by a homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, trysexual or whatever) and be a decent person in the viewpoint of the Paizo staff/writers. James' comments about how he finds such ideas disgusting do nothing to aleviate that viewpoint.

Exactly. It's fine to say "homophobes" (which is a misnomer since it's disgust not fear that is the relevant emotion) are evil. It's not okay to say "I believe homosexual behavior to be immoral." That is hypocritical and definitely not tolerant. The fact that they made a gay paladin (Really? There are many DM's that could not conceive of him engaging in such behavior and remain lawful good and keep his paladin abilites.) and the only one in a small town that disapproves of the homosexual couple is "evil". That isn't just putting gay npc's in an adventure path. That is Paizo saying "Homosexual behavior is defintiely not evil, but disliking it is." That definitely has no place in an rpg.

Lately my impression has been messageboard postings are more antagonistic and vitriolic. It seems anytime someone wants to discuss "balance" or "rules", that drama quickly follows. Many of the longer threads require Ross Byers to stop in and remove some postings. Has anyone else noticed this trend, or is it just me?

Yes, I know this is an internet messageboard, and I shouldn't expect much, but for a long time I felt this board was different. You could have a discussion where posters completely disagreed, but the thread didn't descend into insults and snark.

That can't be. I haven't posted on here in quite a while.

My apologies if this is the wrong place to ask this.

I just got my pdf version and I noticed that the Aasimar Characters have +2 Charisma, and +2 wisdom but no negative. The Tiefling has +2 Dexterity, +2 Intelligence and -2 Charisma.

Was it really the intention to give the Aasimar's such an advantage? It would seem to me that they are fairly overpowered compared to the standard races. (This may just be a personal opinion though.)

I also do understand that the Tiefling has bonuses that the Aasimar does not, which could be considered to outweigh the lack of a negative stat.

Well, those racial adjustments are unchanged from the 3.5 adjustments, so I don't see this as a big deal.

TriOmegaZero wrote:

Abraham reminded me of the one special thing besides bardic music, and that is the Cure X Wounds spells. They are the only arcane caster that gets access to them from the start.

Thats a crazy point to be honest play a cleric they are better at healing now especially with healing surges.

So who cares again its a buff for someone else its good to have not great and certainly not a primary reason to take one.

Healing surges? You do realize that is a 4E term, right? You won't find any healing surges in 3.5 or Pathfinder. Maybe you mean channel energy. Anyway, even if many people don't play bards, enough do that it should remain a base class. A wizard and cleric can do many bard things better, but neither one can inspire courage, cast haste, cast cure spells, and be very good at social and knowledge skills. Only a bard can do all of these without multiclassing enough to be seriously hampered as a character. Inspire courage, by itself can make a huge difference in many encounters. Bards are by no means my favorite class, but there are people that do like them, and I'm glad they have the choice to play them if they want.

Well, some PrC's, such as the eldritch knight, arcane trickster, duelist, arcane archer, and mystic theurge did get a significant boost, and I think that they are reasonable options for character advancement. The assassin's loss of spells does seem to nerf the class more than necessary, but I have an idea for a simple houserule that can remedy that. The shadowdancer did get a bit of a boost, but not nearly enough to make it a viable class, but not many people played them anyway. I don't really care enough about the other classes to comment on them. I don't think it's that big of a deal anyway, because prestige classes should be reigned in a bit to fulfill their original purpose. They are ways to increase role playing opportunities for characters or for them to specialize in a certain niche that can't be done with just multiclassing, feats, etc. They are not supposed to be the key to powergaming you characters.

I am disappointed with the universalist wizard. The class lacks a capstone, has no abilities which scale with level except the severely weakened 'cannot boost a spell above the level you would normally be able to cast' Metamagic Mastery, and now seems to me to be very much the poor relation to specialist wizards (no longer so severely penalised in their opposition schools and with level-scaling abilities and capstones) and sorcerers (funky bloodline powers). In fact sorcerers are now the 'true' masters of magic, it seems to me, with at least three of the bloodlines boosting the DCs of some of their spells in a manner that stacks with Spell Focus and Use Magic Device playing to their natural strongest ability stat if they need magic to do something outside their repertoire of spells known.

It might have something to do with the fact that 1) You are just about the most powerful class in the book, and 2) You aren't giving up stuff like the specialists are. The wizard is one of the few classes that can end an encounter with a single spell from the beginning of play. So don't gripe too much, because the universalist wizard is already "uber" from the start.

It's not really 5th edition D&D. It is what 4th edition D&D should have been! WotC dropped the ball with their new game, and Paizo picked up the slack.

pres man wrote:

This one though? Probably not, some people just made bad choices and wasted their money.

Wrong. Some people weren't informed that the main reason for getting faster delivery (i.e. faster delivery) was null and void in this case and wasted money because of that. You can't expect people to read through the boards - or even the site itself.

If they're going to pull off a stunt like sending out shipments with faster (and thus more expensive) shipping options, they must actually inform them. Put up a note when they order, or inform them per email.

If they don't, people are bound to be pissed.

You can of course add insult to injury and tell them to shut up and quit whining, but you're only making them more pissed. Do that enough and they go away - and take their business with them. So now your rabid fanboyism has actually cost Paizo money.

Well done.

I can understand them being upset. It does seem that it was poorly communicated to them that their books would not be shipped first, but were only guaranteed to arrive within days of the release date. Who wouldn't be upset to pay an extra 30 bucks for the shipping so it would get to them faster, when it actually meant that they would get their order much later than those who didn't pay extra? On the other hand, they should be very thankful that they can afford to not only pay full price for the book, but pay extra for expedited shipping. There are many people, especially nowadays, that can't even afford to get it at Amazon's reduced price with free shipping.

He's a jester. Of course, he's supposed to dress that way all the time.

Keep in mind, I know this is just a preview, and I haven't seen all of the rules in their natural habitat, but I have to say, I was interested in all of the other previews, but this one actually makes me kind of not want to check this out as much as I once did.

I guess when it comes to a new game system, it seems to me that I'd rather see a lot more time exhausting the base assumptions before too many exception are introduced, so one of the first third party books breaking the HD/BaB paradigm actually does bother me, because it makes me wonder a bit about where else the designers might have wanted to make a split from the core assumptions.

Like I said, I know its only a preview, but it does kind of gnaw a bit at my sensibilities. Plus, I'm not sure why a mad scientist class that creates items that emulate spells needs a full BaB either.

I have to say that I kind of agree, but the main thing that bugs me is the flavor for "weird science" seems all wrong. The 3.5 artificer seemed like a good fit with the 3.5 flavor of magic and magic items. This artificer seems like some weird mutant class tacked onto the ruleset that seems to fit better with Spelljammer or a Final Fantasy type setting. I'm not digging having tech or magictech or whatever you call it in my Pathfinder/D&D game. Of course, the other classes previewed so far look good enough that it still could be a useful Pathfinder "splatbook".

Pax Veritas wrote:

Krome - you are a crusty, curmudgeonous, old dwarf - - - and I agree with you.

Um, was there something about the last two years.... that.... prevented these classes from being included in the book? Everyone knows I am a PAIZO cheerleader.... but... 4 seperate pages announced at GEN CON? Hmmmmmn? So... somehow I'm supposed to be excited about 4 new pages that didn't get included in the book I was already so excited about?

If we're throwing in mud-flaps that's one thing, but I'm not thrilled with hearing that we've just decided which additional gear we're adding to the transmission.

This doesn't add up. Please help me understand!?

Here's something you don't see every day; I'm with Pax. Core means in the corebook, end of story. If it was important enough to be core, it should have made the cut. If it wasn't, then it still isn't. Adding base classes was a bad idea when WotC did it, and its a bad idea now.

Further, I find this a disturbing development. I hope the huge success of the corebook hasn't made paizo take their eyes off the ball: great settings and stories. PFRPG was created to support these...a means to an end. It is because of this focus that the RPG became such a success in the first place. If the RPG becomes the end in itself because of sales numbers, then a big part of what made Pathfinder RPG special in the first place will have been lost. Seriously..."Green-lit"? I'm sorry, but that just sounds pompous. I'd like to see this officially confirmed (or better yet, officially refuted).

Edit: So, this was hearsay, but it appears to be legit. That's unfortunate. I'm sure I'm in the minority, and I'm equally sure that my concerns will be dismissed as inevitable disgruntled RPG ranting, but:

Stories (not rules) are what made Paizo great.

Dear Paizo:

I expect that right now, you're telling yourselves you can do both equally well, but no man can serve two masters. I'm sure it is hard to...

They said they were adding 4 classes(one or more of which will probably be a "core" PrC that they felt deserved it's own base class) not x number of splatbooks every month with the occasional adventure thrown in for good measure. Relax a bit and give them the benefit of the doubt. They are Paizo, not TSR or WotC.

New Pathfinder base classes are. So far, not a single Pathfinder product had any new base classes (I'm not counting the 13 core base classes from the PHB/PFRPG).

Isn't there just 11 core base classes? I know that's the number in the 3.5 PHB and the Pathfinder Beta.

Tome of Secrets has a spellblade, warlord, warlock, swashbuckler, shaman, artificer, priest, and knight, so I think we can safely rule those out as well as any classes that are very similar to them. I think that a blackguard base class is very likely. The other three may be a psionic class (or two), a hexblade done right?, and maybe an asian themed class such as a ninja or samurai.

Could someone refresh my memory on what classes are going to be in the Tome of Secrets?

Regardless of how they do it, the assassin definitely needs an upgrade from the Beta version.

Well, it's in the SRD and the Beta, so I wouldn't get rid of it. It just needs some more good abilities or spells that help him do his job. Kill something quick and then get away. Maybe something as simple as doubling his sneak attack dice versus flat-footed opponents as a standard action would do. He should be much better at killing than the rogue, while the rogue is better at more general rogue stuff such as picking pockets and locks, and disarming traps.

I hope they do give the assassin an upgrade in the final book. The Beta assassin had some nifty abilities, but the loss of spells was too big of a hit to his overall flexibility and power, especially considering the power boost all the other classes got.

Disappointed!!!

I try to calm down and will try to post somthing positive tomorrow.
I leave you with a quote from another thread by the wise Shisumo:

"I just don't know what it is supposed to do. It would make a nice twist on the "mystic ninja" idea - but it doesn't have sneak attack dice. It could be an interesting spin on a bard - but it improves neither spellcasting nor bardic performance. What the heck is it? [...]"

And Zark says: nor is it any good if you are a monk.

I agree. They are only in Pathfinder because they are in 3.5, and they were only in 3.5 because they were in 3.0. I guess you'd have to ask the original creator of the class what they had in mind when they came up with it.

Yeah, I can't really see, how heroes of pulp fantasy could have inspired any 4e mechanics.

I had missed the spellcasting boost, too. 5th level spells at 20th level isn't exactly game breaking. In 3.5, the spellcasting ability of rangers and paladins goes to waste most of the time, because hardly any spell they can cast is worth giving up a full attack or move and attack. At least rangers and paladins can buff and heal a little bit more in Trailblazer. I'd say it's a good way to balance them against the barbarian and fighter.

I had asked Wulf Ratbane of Badaxe Games (Grim Tales) to post another preview of his upcoming Trailblazer supplement for d20 fantasy. Here's the Trailblazer ranger.

It seems to be lacking, especially compared to the barbarian and the fighter.

Well, I can't see the "inspiration" for those classes apparent anywhere in the mechanics of those classes. If he was trying to make classes "feel" like what inspired them, he didn't do such a good job. But then again, I don't know how it would be possible to recreate any semblance of a memorable character from pulp fantasy novels using 4E's mechanics. They are pretty much the antithesis of the pulp action "feel" that D&D was derived from.

I'm not going to lie the barbarian seems very meh and very much treading on the fighters toe's with all the bonus feat shenanigans.

I agree. The barbarian already has abilities that end up being far more potent than the fighter's bonus feats. Giving him bonus feats steps on the fighter's toes too much, and leaves the fighter lagging behind power wise. I say ditch them.

As far an ENWorld goes, I'd take what's being said here with a few grains of salt. It's very easy to misconstrue responsible moderation that seeks to keep the forum clean of threads or posts that bait or insult as unfairly prejudicial, especially when you're on the receiving end of that moderation. The moderators' primary responsibility is to ensure that the forum operates in a way that is healthy for the community. Acting on that responsibility is not abuse of power.

Responsible moderation will lock and delete posts or suspend posters for particulary aggregious insults and violation of rules. A repeated partern of this could result in a ban. Abuse of moderator power is "Say the slightest negative thing about 4E, and you and your post are history." The latter is what I personally witnessed at ENWorld close to 4E's release.

It was pretty bad when the edition wars were hot and heavy. I saw one poster get suspended for several days for a realtively benign comment that wasn't positive about 4E. At that time, there was no point in posting if you weren't absolutely gushing over 4E and everything WotC. It was so bad that it was apparent the moderators were blatantly abusing their powers to stifle anything that wasn't pro-4E. I believe part of the reason was that WotC had a lot of advertisements on the site at the time. It seems pretty clear that they were pushing 4E for WotC's advertising dollars. I think it's gotten better since then, but I still don't frequent ENWorld or post there as much as I used to.

The designers may have increased monster hit points to let them live long enough to use their abilities and make encounters less "swingy", but I think they went too far. I would say reduce hit points of monsters by 25-50%. A combat that is somewhat swingy is fun and dramatic (unless one side obliterates the other in one round), whereas a combat that is just about grinding through the enemies huge store of hit points is incredibly boring.

Pax Veritas wrote:

Is there any precedence in the system for a wholesale swap-out... "I'll trade you 8 Druid Levels for 8 Cleric levels." I've never heard of that....but if you have a source reference I surely would appreciate it.

Caveat: I am completely comfortable handling this with DM Fiat, as I also run a monthly 1e game. But my pride and joy is v.3.5/Pathfinder RPG Beta, and I use all RAW.

I think there are some retraining rules in the PHBII, that might be helpful if you want to stay within the realm of the RAW.

Blackguards can trade in ex-paladin levels for blackguard levels, so I don't see why a druid can't trade in levels for cleric levels.

I used to read a lot of FR novels. I don't read many anymore. The last few I have read were ruined by the numerous references to the spellplague even though the novels took place before the spellplague. I think that post spellplague FR novels won't be the cash cow they used to be. It looks like a lose lose situation to me. What was the point?

Because, someone posted ...

dmchucky69 wrote:

We're gamers, we shouldn't be talking politics. We should be talking hot chicks that none of us have a chance to get dates with.

The girl with the flurescent red hair is my fave.

From what I understand, most of the playtesting was internal, with some freelancers playesting with NDA's to keep them quiet. Regardless, of how they did it, they should have done a better job, because the amount of errata is staggering. I don't think it's be worth buying a PHB unless it is from a later print run with all of the errata updates in it. Of course, I doubt that WotC will fork out the cash to do that.

I have friends who love it, because it plays more like a high-speed video game than does 3.5. Of course, they still play fast and...

If 4E plays like a high-speed video game, I'd hate to see what a slow speed video game plays like. This is not necessarily an attack on 4e but a personal observation. For example, I know of a Living Forgotten Realms session played this weekend that took from 1PM on Saturday to 4:30 AM on Sunday to complete, primarily due to the horrifically long combats. It was twice as long as the usual LFR modules, but this is still utterly ridiculous. From my own personal experience and that of others, this is typical of 4E. Wasn't one of the chief goals of 4E to speed up gameplay? Then when they discovered that that wasn't the case, they backpedaled and said "But the rounds are faster." which still isn't exactly true all of the time. When the rounds do go faster than 3.5, you still have about 2-3 times more rounds than in 3.5, so I don't see a real improvement.

WotC's Nightmare wrote:

Scott Betts wrote:

WotC's Nightmare wrote:

Considering WotC's history with producing broken material, and the (IMHO) broken math of 4E, I would trust my judgement about the balance of game mechanics over WotC's 9 times out of 10.

This is exactly the attitude I was talking about.

I don't think that it's at all unreasonable to trust my judgement about what is balanced for my games over that of some strangers who don't have an inkling about my campaign or the people I play with. WotC pushed a lot of broken stuff out of the door during the 3.0/3.5 erra. The original math for their skill challenges was very wrong, and the "broken" math of 4E has led to many complaints of long, drawn out combats A.K.A. "the grind". Given their track record, it seems far more reasonable to trust my own judgement than it does to blindly follow theirs.

Again, the last sentence probably seems very reasonable to you, but that's exactly what huge numbers of individuals tell themselves about innumerable things every single day - "Pfff, sure, they may be experts, but what the heck do they know about my life?" That very sentiment is one of the most dangerous, unhealthy convictions that an individual can possess.

This is a game we're talking about, not brain surgery. WotC is not perfect. They have put out things that I could tell were broken at a glance. They had to create the expertise feats in the PHB II to help fix the broken math of 4E. They may be professionals, but they have flubbed things plenty of times, so I'm not going to take their word that something is okay because they said so and "everything" is core. I know you love 4E, and WotC as well, but your defense of their so called expertise is starting to seem quite irrational.

WotC's Nightmare wrote:

Considering WotC's history with producing broken material, and the (IMHO) broken math of 4E, I would trust my judgement about the balance of game mechanics over WotC's 9 times out of 10.

This is exactly the attitude I was talking about.

I don't think that it's at all unreasonable to trust my judgement about what is balanced for my games over that of some strangers who don't have an inkling about my campaign or the people I play with. WotC pushed a lot of broken stuff out of the door during the 3.0/3.5 erra. The original math for their skill challenges was very wrong, and the "broken" math of 4E has led to many complaints of long, drawn out combats A.K.A. "the grind". Given their track record, it seems far more reasonable to trust my own judgement than it does to blindly follow theirs.

Blazej wrote:

Personally, I find the idea of trusting the content just because WotC made it to be silly.

I find the idea of personally evaluating the relative strength of each individual rules element to be far beyond the ken of most DMs and players, and it to be a far more efficient and stress-free route to simply allow official material and address balance concerns should they actually arise.

Most people are not game designers. Most people have no idea what makes a rule element balanced or not balanced. And yet a great many people are convinced that they are capable of evaluating rule elements in this way. From an objective standpoint, trusting the experts is going to pan out more accurately than trusting oneself nine times out of ten. It's only when people pretend to expertise they don't have that they begin to believe they know better than the people who built the game.

I'm not saying that everything from WotC is balanced. I am saying that even if it's not balanced, evaluating that purely on a read-through of the rule element is not something most people are capable of, even if they think they are.

We have experts for a reason.

I advise allowing all official material from WotC, assuming that it has reconcilable flavor, and addressing balance concerns when they become apparent in play (and even then, to reserve judgment until a long view of the rule element's impact is seen).

Well, Scott. Considering WotC's history with producing broken material, and the (IMHO) broken math of 4E, I would trust my judgement about the balance of game mechanics over WotC's 9 times out of 10. The fact that online Dragon content is allowed by the RPGA and is included in the character builder probably does make it more official to many gamers than it was before. I will give yo that much.

Heathansson wrote:

Kids love Jar Jar.

Which shows how diabolic Lucas is: Gets kids hooked with jarjars, and then BAM! Evil Child Murderer Anakin Attack which deals 5d% sanity damage. :D

Wayne Jarvis wrote:

I would just like to point out that "legal pdfs" are stamped with the purchaser's name/email/account num or whatnot. You would have to be a moron to upload a stamped pdf on p2p. If someone does upload a pdf it's going to be an unstamped one (read: illegal).

Well, it seems that people were removing the visible watermarks but not the invisible ones, and so some people were caught.

Wayne Jarvis wrote:

The thing that has me annoyed is the older books. We're seeing more and more local stores closing and its being coming more and more difficult to find 3rd edition or 3.5 books. 4th edition books are everywhere. I want one I can get one in any bookstore. But pdfs allow WOTC to continue selling and making money with out the overhead of reprinting.

Which was probably one of the real reasons behind this: Further limit access to older stuff, so people might be more inclined to buy 4e. They've been trying to get rid of the older editions ever since they announced 4e.

Yeah, WotC would really love it, if the 3.5 market dwindled to almost nothing. They want 4th edition D&D to be the only edition of D&D.

Plus, my son needs Star Wars figures and such crap, and Hasbro makes all that, so my hatred looks hypocritical somehow.

Your son "needs" Star Wars figures? Don't you mean that he "wants" Star Wars figures?

Heathansson wrote:

some think it is an overreaction on WOTC's part

I don't think so. I know so. Because yanking existing pdfs won't hurt the illegal distribution one bit. This is either the greatest overreaction ever, or they have other motives and were only using this as a cop-out.

Yeah, I suspect,it has more about trying to keep older editions of D&D from competing with 4E or wanting to keep all the profits from electronic copies as opposed to just most of the profits. It's probably a mixture of both. Fighting piracy is just a flimsy excuse, since there is no way making illegal electronic copies of your products the only electronic copies available to the public will in no way reduce the pirating of those products.

I just noticed in the PHB II that with the vicious mockery at will power you can literally tease your enemy to death... Sorry, but that just seems kind of stupid. No more "sticks and stone can break my bones, but words will never hurt me".

What do you expect? It's 4E, where a warlord can heal with a non-magicl pep-talk, a paladin shoots lasers at foes to punish them for not attacking him, and causing damage with an intimidate check is a possible stunt.

Xaaon of Xen'Drik wrote:

Let's see...

Edition change...CHECK
Increase price on Minis...CHECK
Increase prices...CHECK
Disallow others to sell...CHECK
Dumb down the game...THAT'S A BIG CHECK

Yeah, sounds like they got a hold of GW's business model...

Require buying a lot of expensive books to play the complete game?

No kidding. You would have to buy about 6 4E books to get the same class/race/customization options in one 3.5 PHB. You'd get some extra stuff as well, but if you want just the stuff available in the 3.5 PHB, you have to get a small library of 4E books. A 4E DM would also have to get probably 3 or 4 MM's/monster books to get the same monsters in the 3.5 MM. That's just ridiculous.

Is it just me, or is WotC begging it's customers to boycott them?

Yeah, knight is the best example of a defender class for 3.5. Actually, all 4 classes in the 3.5 PHB II seem to be designed to fill the 4.0 roles: dragon shaman - leader, duskblade - striker, knight - defender, beguiler - controller. Since they were already working on 4E when this came out, it makes sense.

I am playing around with the idea of using some of the good bits of 4E D&D...yes there is some...mind you *SOME* for my 3.5E. Mind you I am loving the Pathfinder RPG. They really moved the game into new realms that I feel improved the game. What I am talking about are things like roles. Instead of classifying it like old school 1E and 2E with Warrior, Wizard, Priest and Thief or Adventurer, Arcane, Divine and Warrior I was thinking of by "power source" and/or "role" like in 4E. Here is a sample of what I got so far. Some are obviously done already....oh...BTW...no BARD, PALADIN or RANGER in my game...they are prestige classes. I am using the option from Unearthed Arcana for the prestige class version of those. Some classes I have no experiance in my game, I have only read them. I use normally in my game all the core classes, except the ones outlined plus we have had a Favored Soul (started as a Fighter and multiclassed into it) and Scout (started as a Druid and multiclassed into it)

Take a look at the list below and tell me what you all think.

BY NAME: Barbarian, Cleric, Druid, Favored Soul, Fighter, Hexblade,
Marshal, Monk, Rogue, Scout, Sorcerer, Spellthief, Swashbuckler, Warlock,Warmage,Wizard

Controlers: Druid, Favored Soul, Wizard
Defenders: Fighter, Hexblade, Monk, Warmage
Leaders: Cleric, Marshal, Sorcerer
Strikers: Barbarian, Rogue, Scout, Spellthief,Swashbuckler,Warlock

Arcane: Hexblade, Sorcerer, Spellthief, Warlock, Warmage, Wizard
Divine: Cleric, Favored Soul, Monk
Martial: Fighter, Marshal, Rogue, Swashbuckler
Primal: Barbarian, Druid, Scout

I still don't know what benefit this chart gives you are your players, but favored soul is clearly a leader, and warmages are definitely controllers. Sorcerers are controllers not leaders. Monks are closer to a striker than a defender, and are martial not divine. Barbarians are kind of defender/striker hybrid. Hexblades are a controller/defender hybrid. Fighters are probably a striker/defender hybrid as well. There really are no "defender" classes in 3.5. To be a defender in the 4th edition sense, a class has to have class features that punish enemies for moving past them or attacking someone besides them. You can do this to some extent with the right selection of feats and equipment, but no class is a default defender.

An idea that has went well (for DM and Player) is to steal a version of 4E minions. Any time the players encounter creatures that are 5 or CR lower then them give them a save per hit to stay alive.

I use a d6 track with a equal to or more to stay alive.

2 (tough, tough creature. Will take a few hits to die)
3 (tough creature. Will take a few hits to die)
4 (durable creature. Will take usually more then one hit)
5 (standard creature. Will take usually more then one hit)
6 (Fodder. Wont survive more then one hit often.)

and after each successful save the creature moves up one on the save track (4 ->5, etc)

That sounds awfully complicated for a minion. Might as well just keep track of hp. I'm not trying to be too critical, but isn't the whole point of minions that they die after one hit so you have less bookkeeping and can throw more of them at the PC's? I have comtemplated having "minion" creatures drop if they take half of their hp or more in one hit. That might be a better way to do it.

I really don't know what catergorizing the classes into power sources and roles does for your 3.5 game. The only benefit I see is using it to help new players understand what makes a balanced and successful party. Other than that, I really don't see why this is useful. Even in 4th edition, power source is largely flavor with little mechanical impact. If you want to modify the classes to better fit their role, then you have a pretty big task ahead of you that is probably more trouble than it is worth. If you want to use things like saving throws instead of durations and the way 4E does recharging of breath weapons, etc., that might be useful.

Jandrem wrote:

Anywho,

My likes: On it's own, it's a fairly solid system.

Dislikes: 4e in general. Just not the style of RPG I like.

It's as simple as that. It has become apparent to me that at this point any reason I give for my disliking of the edition is going to get me chewed up and spit out by the Guardian of All Things 4e, so I'll leave my reasons as my own. 3e has many, many flaws, but I can work with it. 4e on its own is a fine system, but is not my style of game.

I have the books. I've read them. I tried, I really did. I just don't like it.

No offense intended to Jandrem, but to illustrate the point I'm making, the above post does very little to contribute to the thread. It provides nothing for anyone to go on, no reasons as to why you like or dislike what parts of the game, and manages to make a snide comment about people who defend 4th Edition all at once.

Back on the topic of the thread, Stefan, you're the first person I've seen to point to the half-level bonuses as something they dislike about 4th Edition. Could you explain what it is about it that doesn't sit well with you? Is it because it seems like all characters (classes) improve at an equal rate in all things?

Well, if he did give his reasons, I'm sure you would pick apart every one, telling him how wrong each one is. Now, if he said "I love 4th edition. It's the only RPG I'll ever play. I won't go into the specific reasons, but I love it." would you still say he didn't contribute to the thread? I seriously doubt it. Did he not contribute becasue he wasn't specifc or because he didn't say 4E is the best thing ever? You may call me an irrational 4E hater and a troll, but aren't you just as hostile in your defense of 4E? I have played 4E. Me and my group tried really hard to like it. In the end, it was more effort than it was worth. There are a few minor things I like about 4E such as the way they do the recharge of monster abilities and durations of effects (saving throws). They can keep everything else.

We have only had a small bash at 4th edition but the bottom line is as a "story telling" (i.e. not combat after combat after combat) roleplaying game I think that 4th falls shorter than any previous edition. Once the mechanics of each class "power" are boiled down you end up with very little difference between classes. I agree that this makes for balance, but also makes things slightly boring. We seem to have lots of "I do power X for 3d6 + str + cha", and another person does "3d6 + dex + wis" etc. Once out of combat there seems little in the way of skills/powers that seems to scream "role play" - one 'spell list' for all? The above shouldn't be taken in a negative way, I have one player who likes board/war games and he thinks its great - squares rather than feet for movement. But I guess that I what makes 4th edition not my game of choice is that combat even more now removes the players from the game (their characters) and adds in talk of game mechanics. Except for the aforementioned player the rest of the my group dislikes the way things have gone for D&D. Again not to say that 4th edition is wrong or bad, just that for my group (who lived through the first D&D then 1st ed. then 2nd, then 3rd ed.) this is quite an alien game that focuses far too much on combat related mechanics. Battles are an exciting part of roleplaying but they aren't the only aspect of roleplaying. Then again pen&paper RPG's are now competing with computer based online games and 4th edition seems to reflect this.

I agree with you. My group tried it, hated it, and abandoned it. It's far too much of minis game/MMORPG and far too little of an RPG. I have no desire to play a game where a paladin shoots lasers at creatures to punish them for not attacking him, or where my 1st level ranger does the exact same attack routine (hunter's quarry + twin strike) as my 29th level ranger 90% of the time. I also have little desire to play in a game where PC's have to beat on a group of kobolds for 5-10 rounds before dropping them (They are kobolds for crying out loud!) Seriously, how many people would recognize this completely new game as Dungeons and Dragons if the D&D logo wasn't all over the books?

Personally, I would use the 3.0 version of the bladesinger and up the hit dice to d10. This version can be found in Tome and Blood and Races of Faerun. If that's not enough, it at least gives you a good place to start from.

Jason, I think you can see where all of this is going. The assassin definitely needs his spells back or some really awesome class abilities to compensate for their loss. It's still a cool class, but it should not remain in it's current mechanically gimped state.

The feat Ability Focus from the MM can raise the DC of an assassain's death attack by 2. It can also be used for things like stunning fist or a hexblade's curse.

I'm not exactly against a spell less assassain, but my concern is that the spells were not replaced with abilites of equivalent power and utility. Every other class stayed about the same or got some power ups in Pathfinder. The assassain was effectively downgraded. This is not good. He does get some interesting and thematic abilites but they are to few, too weak, and too situational to adequately replace his spellcasing abilities. Give him some really good talents or class abilites to offset the loss of spells, and me and other fans of the class will be most grateful.