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I would suggest to keep the number of stacking named bonuses and things like damage types down. I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter. Seriously, this is probably one of the best ideas I've seen on these playtest forums. Pare down the number of bonus types and you go a long way toward eliminating both the complexity and power issues of v.3.5. Good stuff.
I have the AD&D book at home, Rangers have had spells for quite a long time. Since they were first a distinct class as far as I know. Correct. Rangers, which first appeared in The Strategic Review #2, have always had spells. In the original article, they had cleric and magic-user (i.e. wizard) spells, but this was changed in AD&D to druid and magic-user spells. Paladins, on the other hand, did not originally have spells per se. The class first appears in Supplement I to OD&D and, while it has many "magical" abilities, like curing disease and laying on hands, it does not have spells. All this aside, I think it reasonable to make spellcasting an option for both classes, as this will ensure backward compatibility with v.3.5. However, if other ability/talent choices exist, some players may decide to forgo spells entirely for them. This seems the simplest and most elegant solution and would go a long way toward making these classes more flexible.
The paladin is an alignment paragon primarily in the sense that a paladin believes and acts according to X, Y, and Z and since X, Y, and Z map onto the alignment called Lawful Good, all paladins are Lawful Good. To put it another way, paladins are all Lawful Good in the same way that all fathers are male. Being Lawful Good isn't so much a requirement of being a paladin as a fact of being a paladin. Being a paladin isn't a club you join or even a profession you take up; it's who you are.
For simplification purposes, I'd either subsume Disguise into Deception or make it a specialization of Perform.
Please, no more new races, at least not in the core book.
All these stories are possible in D&D. The only "problem" is that a paladin who torches a city block to prevent the spread of a plague has transgressed the strictures of his alignment and is no longer a paladin. Now, fallen paladins are cool and the blackguard prestige class even gives extra powers to individuals who were once paragons of goodness and have fallen to corruption but the point is they are ex-paladins. It sounds to me like your concerns have little to do with the paladin class and far more to do with alignment. If that's the case, there's not much to be done, as alignment is pretty central to D&D and I'd be hard pressed to imagine Pathfinder ditching it. So far, the Paizo crew has demonstrated the ability to tell dramatically complex stories within the bounds of the alignment system, so I doubt it's a major issue for them.
The view that Paladin is about unshakeable faith/zealotry in a god or philosophy is a misconception of the intended spirit of the Paladin. A paladin's goal is to do the right thing. All the time, every time, without exception. In word and in deed. Even to the point of arguing with their deity, if necessary... Very well put.
To me palidins should be about zelotry and unshakable faith in a god or philosophy. Not 'we are the shining examplers of Lawful goodness.' Can I ask why? From their first appearance up through 3e, paladins have always been about law and goodness, with goodness being the more important of the two (which is why the commission of an evil act immediately causes the paladin to lose all his special abilities until he atones for it).
When I think of paladins, two superheroes come to mind: Superman and Captain America (although it could also be argued that DC's Captain Marvel fits the bill better than Supes, but that's neither here nor there right now). They are the heroes that the other heroes in their respective comic book worlds look up to. Their very presence inspires, simply because they are so uncompromising in their pursuit of Justice, Truth, and the Greater Good for all mankind. That they are not willing to become like the fiends they are sworn to apprehend. Exactly. Remember too that D&D's paladin class is largely inspired by Poul Anderson's novel Three Hearts and Three Lions, whose protagonist is Ogier the Dane is one of the twelve paladins of Charlemagne. Paladins are (roughly) the French equivalents of the Knights of the Round Table and are dedicated to extremely high ideals -- virtue both in battle and in governance.
1) Make it so the Paladin is NOT required to be LG. I mean why can't non-LG deities have holy warriors. I think what people are missing is that the paladin is not a "holy warrior." Rather, a paladin is a very specific example of a "fighter" who adheres to a strict code that places law and good deeds above all else. A paladin can -- and usually does -- serve a deity but what a paladin truly represents is a zealous devotion for righteousness, which is to say, justice, respect for legitimate authorities, honor, and truth. These are ideals that transcend the dogma of any particular religion. If anything, the paladin is better called an "alignment warrior," since he's a champion of all that Law and Good stand for. I think the fixation on paladins being holy warriors in a narrow sense is distorting what the class is and why it has an alignment restriction.
In the end, the 10 minute rest structure only changes the amount of in-game time that passes between such rests as I choose to allow. I find the continuity of the game is much improved if only 10 game minutes pass between such rests, as opposed to a full day. Interestingly, it is this that is what bothers me most about your proposal. The shift from 24 hours to 10 minutes changes the feel of the game quite dramatically. Entering an ancient tomb to battle its undead guardians knowing that what you bring with you is all you have for the next 24 hours (at least) makes the adventure feel more like an expedition. Knowing that many of your resources refresh after 10-minutes rest makes it feel more like an action movie. To me anyway. I can only speak for myself here, but D&D has always felt more "literary" to me than "cinematic." Long stretches of time preparing and planning, and then taking care to execute those plans in the most efficient way because you knew your resources required a degree of safety that you couldn't guarantee -- that's what D&D feels like to me. A shorter reset time might work just fine and even be a lot of fun but it'd ultimately not feel like the D&D I want to play anymore than 4e does. In any event, it mostly comes down to personal preference. I'll be curious to see if my read on Paizo is correct and that they favor the older style with its longer required rest period. If not, well, I already have several iterations of D&D that give me what I want, so I can't complain. I'm still hopeful, though, that Pathfinder might be a current iteration that hews closely to my own preferences.
(This is James Maliszewski, yes?) Yep. I prefer my encounters to be dramatic affairs. Every single one? As a preference, there's nothing wrong with that, but it runs counter to the assumptions behind D&D. Resource management on a strategic scale is important to the feel of the game. If most resources "reset" with each encounter, then there's very little need to manage them. Wizards can freely blow all their best spells every encounter and there are no consequences to such behavior, whereas in standard D&D this would be considered short-sightedness on par with downing one of only a few available healing potions anytime your character's hit points were below 100%. The steady attrition of encounters, including random ones, is part of the calculus of dungeon delving. Do I use my fireball now or save it for later? Is this the fight to pull out my quiver of arrows +1 or not? And so on. I can understand not liking this style of play, but it's what D&D is and, unless I'm mistaken, it's this sort of style that Paizo wants to preserve in Pathfinder. Oh, and this is important too: I want to be able to assume that the PCs are going to be fresh so that the CR/EL system is accurately predictive of the outcome. I agree with this point, but then I think the CR/EL system is both badly broken and poorly in tune with the way D&D's rules were written. I'd rather Paizo came up with an entirely new system that works better with the slow attrition/strategic management paradigm.
I firmly believe that the rules should support the way the game is actually played. In my experience, 3e plays like this: If so, my experience is an oddity (which is possible). In any event, I can only say that, while the ideas you suggest are fine and may even be backward compatible (though I have my doubts), they don't feel like D&D to me. That's purely subjective, of course, but for me they go too far. I don't want to see Pathfinder go down this route, which is a lot closer to 4e's approach than I feel comfortable with. Others may disagree, Paizo included, but I see the 15-minute adventuring day as a feature, not a bug and find most solutions, this one included, to treat encounters as standardized set piece battles. 3e does this too much already as it stands for my taste. But as I say, this is just my take on it. Others may like such an approach, but I don't and can't see how Pathfinder could adopt it without fundamentally changing the feel of both the rules and the world they constructed using them.
FWIW, the first appearance of the paladin class in 1975 did not include spells as part of his repertoire of abilities. The paladin could lay on hands, cure diseases, and dispel evil. He could also summon a mount but there's no clear implication that it was re-summonable on a regular basis. Paladin also received better saving throws (+2 to all). Given that a) backward compatibility is paramount b) players are asking for better paladin abilities and c) the original conception of the paladin was not a spellcaster, why not give the Pathfinder paladin talent choices -- let's call them "charisms" -- some of which are spellcasting abilities that, if taken in total, closely approximate the spells of the v.3.5 paladin. However, if players don't wish to go that route, they should have other charisms available to choose from. This would give the paladin a wider range of abilities and keep the class (largely) backward compatible.
Part of the problem may stem from the distance that 3rd Edition took away from some of the low-fantasy "realism" elements of earlier editions. There is a lot more magic designed to get the party to where it wants to go, and much reduced emphasis on "bump-a-dee-dah" time. Lots of campaigns ignore horses entirely. They're a legacy feature from earlier editions. This is, unfortunately, true. Much as I love 3e, there's no question that it's taken quite a few steps away from the pulp fantasy tone of earlier editions. That said, the paladin mount has been part of the D&D paladin class longer than spells have been, so I'm loath to see it removed. Building on your idea of a celestial spirit that possesses the paladin's normal horse, what about this: what if the celestial spirit was itself the paladin's "companion" and, whenever a paladin needed its services, it could possess any nearby riding animal, turning into some kind of holy charger with nifty abilities? It'd serve the same purpose as the derided "poke-mount," but it'd seem less unbelievable.
It's true that magic missile does 1d6+1 damage in OD&D, Holmes Basic, Moldvay Basic, Mentzer Basic, and the Rules Cyclopedia (and 1d4+1 in 1e and all derivatives thereof). But only in Holmes did you ever have to roll to hit with the spell. From what I have gathered, the Holmes interpretation represents an idiosyncratic interpretation of the original appearance of the spell in Supplement I, an interpretation specifically disavowed in all editions that follow it.
Until 3rd edition, there wasn't much talk of Paladins following Law and Good instead of gods. Supplement I: Greyhawk (1975): "Charisma scores of 17 or greater by fighters indicate the possibility of paladin status IF THEY ARE LAWFUL from the commencement of play for that character. If such fighters elect to they can then become paladins, always doing lawful deeds, for any chaotic act will immediately revoke the status of paladin, and it can never be regained. The paladin has a number of very powerful aids in his continual seeking for good" Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook (1977): "Law and good deeds are the meat and drink of paladins. If they ever knowingly perform an act which is chaotic in nature, they must seek a high level (7th or above) cleric of lawful good alignment, confess their sin, and do penance as prescribed by the cleric. If a paladin should ever knowingly and willingly perform an evil act, he or she loses the status of paladinhood immediately and irrevocably." I no longer have my 2e books, so I can't check to see what it says on the matter.
I love them, if they turn up very very rarely - there's nothing quite like seeing a player face a save or die for his beloved character. I feel the same way. I think it's incumbent upon a good DM not to throw save or die monsters and effects at the PCs too often, but their occasional use can be very fun -- sometimes especially if the beloved character does die. What happens next is often the stuff of great adventures.
Those are the words from which sprang about a zillion fallen paladins, cast down by the whims of a catch-22 situation inflicted by a vindictive DM. But again, that's a problem with the DM, not the paladin class.
The new turning mechanic looks decent; I'll have to playtest it to see how it works in play but I like it because it eliminates the need to use a table and so should be speedier in play. That said, I'm not keen on the way the healing mechanic has been worked into it -- not because I dislike the notion of a cleric's gaining extra healing "spells," but because I think the implementation is unnecessarily clunky. What I'd recommend is twofold. First, decouple the new healing ability from turning, so it's not an added effect on top of the turning. Second, give all clerics the ability to channel their god's power into the Material Plane and use that power in a variety of ways, as suggested by this post above:
Turning could be one such use of divine power, but healing would be another. I'd recommend having a handful of "generic" uses for divine power (perhaps divided according to alignment) available to all and then add one additional one per domain. This way, clerics would gain some diversity and flexibility. They'd have 3 + Charisma modifier times per day that they could turn undead, heal or inflict wounds (as appropriate), and other effects, including ones specific to their domains. I don't this would be too overpowered and it'd go some way toward addressing a number of concerns relating to clerics.
Personally, I don't think there needs to be a class that specifically represents good in all its glory, mainly because "good" is so ambiguous. Good and evil, law and chaos are (largely) objective concepts in D&D. I'm honestly confused why so many people seem to think they're ambiguous. D&D -- and the v.3.5 SRD -- define these terms in fairly clear terms. Where exactly is the trouble?
Responses like this need to be posted regularly, so people don't let their enthusiasm get the better of them. Honestly, it's deeply frustrating to me to read thread after thread of suggested "fixes" that are in fact complete changes to the way that v.3.5 works on either a fundamental level or that work against backward compatibility. As Erik says, these are not the design goals of Pathfinder. Why does everyone keep making suggestions like this?
A central design goal of the Pathfinder RPG is backward compatibility with v.3.5, so classes are here to stay. I'm honestly not sure what it is about this project that makes people think Paizo has any interest whatsoever in fundamentally changing the structure of the game.
Imagine two neighbouring nations with a seperate LG religion woven into their societies. Can these two then never come to a point where they go to war with each other? Can the two not remain true to their faith while mercilessly slaughtering the opposition? Don't people often view their actions as good and righteous but to those that suffer because of them view them as evil? War, yes; slaughter, no. I imagine that two Lawful Good nations could easily come to blows over all manner of things, but they'd behave honorably and justly toward their enemies in battle -- a kind of fantasy version of <i>pax Dei</i> to which Christian nations were enjoined in the Middle Ages. At least, that's how I've always viewed it and I get the impression that's how it played out in settings like Greyhawk.
Imagine a inherently good deity that just doesn't have a problem using deception as long as the greater good prevails. A paladin sworn to this deity shouldn't really be faulted for emulating his deity. Such a deity wouldn't be Lawful Good but probably Chaotic Good and thus wouldn't have paladins as followers. The thing I'm noticing here is that people are forgetting that, in D&D, the alignment system exists separate from the gods. The gods and other extra-planar beings conform to the alignment system rather than define it. So, a god like Heironeous, to use a Greyhawk example, is deemed Lawful Good because he exhibits the qualities and espouses the virtues of that alignment rather than the other way around. Paladins are exactly the same. There can be differing interpretations of religious doctrine between multiple LG gods, with separate holy days, liturgical practices, taboos, etc. But all LG gods and their followers will adhere to the same basic respect for truth, honor, fair play, and so on, because that's what it means to be Lawful Good. It seems to me, as I read this thread, that a lot of people are confusing their personal preferences for a generic "holy warrior" class and/or their dislike for the alignment system with "problems" with the paladin class. The paladin class, as it exists in v.3.5, isn't "broken" conceptually. It may not be what some people want, but that's a different thing entirely.
I'm not going to say that this isn't a problem from time to time, but honestly, I get the feeling that this was something that most people accepted as just part of the D&D style of play "If we go in guns blazing, we'll be finished in 15 minutes, if we play smart, we have hours to check this place out." Correct. I think there are some mechanical changes that can be made to mitigate the worst aspects of the so-called 15-minute adventuring day, but, by and large, this is just the style of play D&D evokes and that its rules have always supported. To "fix" it would require both a significant overhaul of many core mechanics and a change in the play style it evokes. I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with alternate approaches, although I don't find them especially interesting. However, Pathfinder is, among other things, about preserving a gaming space for certain types of stories, namely the stories the D&D mechanics evoke, including the cautious, "play smart" spellcaster who doesn't blow his full allotment of spells on the first encounter. Again, some of the worst excesses of this style can be blunted somewhat through judicious rules tweaks, but nothing short of a major rules overhaul will eliminate it entirely and that's not what Pathfinder is about.
I think the biggest 'fix' to the Paladin is to have the code revised. I'm curious: what's wrong with the existing code? I get the sense a lot of people find it problematic, but so far as I can see, it's rather flexible and easily followed.
I suppose I qualify as a "professional" game designer, since I've written or contributed to quite a few gaming products since 1999. I don't keep an up to date bibliography of my work, but here's a decent one someone else compiled, though it ends in 2005 and I've written more since then, including a new science fiction RPG published earlier this year.
2) Paladins should be tied their diety's code of conduct, not just a random set of LG morality concepts. The class has got to be playable. I have known DM's to really hamstring paladins with a bunch of extra-nonsense that makes the class un-playable. Different dieties should have slightly different codes of conduct, that are in keeping with what the diety stands for. This sounds like a DM problem, not a paladin problem. As described in the v.3.5 SRD, a paladin must adhere to the precepts of the Lawful Good alignment ("She tells the truth, keeps her word, helps those in need, and speaks out against injustice. A lawful good character hates to see the guilty go unpunished.") with a few additional paladin-specific elements ("she respect[s] legitimate authority, act[s] with honor (not lying, not cheating, not using poison, and so forth), help[s] those in need (provided they do not use the help for evil or chaotic ends), and punish[es] those who harm or threaten innocents."). That's a very broadly applicable moral code, regardless of a paladin's deity.
This is about preserving the conceptual framework of the third edition core rules I think this needs to be emblazoned in big red letters at the top of each Alpha playtest sub-forum. I certainly don't want to discourage anyone's creativity or suggest it's wrong to "think outside the box," but a lot of what I see on these boards are suggestions and ideas that would make Pathfinder not just superficially but fundamentally a different game than v.3.5. That's not the goal here and I think we'd be of greater help to Paizo if we keep Erik's words here in mind. More wide reaching changes can come at a later date, in the form of supplements and so forth, but Pathfinder is about preserving v.3.5 except in those places where it's either outright broken or unduly complex. The paladin has a few minor issues, like most base classes, but it's not broken; it doesn't need a total overhaul.
Thank you.
I wouldn't miss paladin spells at all. The paladin class from Supplement I did not have spells; that wasn't introduced till AD&D, so swapping out the paladin's spells would be, in a weird way, a return to the OD&D conception of the class, which is nifty. That said, a spell-less paladin would be quite different than the v.3.5 version, which could be a problem.
(And yes, I was just reading some Fafhrd and Gray Mouser recently... going back to the roots) It's stuff like this that makes me love you guys you so much. The idea that you're actually making little tweaks to the game in order to bring it back, at least a little, to its literary roots is something I applaud. Good show! More please.
I'm having a lot of trouble understanding the need for non-LG paladins in the Pathfinder rulebook. The goal of this book is to present a game that's generally backward compatible with v.3.5 and that's consonant with the traditions of D&D-style fantasy, one element of which is LG-only paladins. Certainly there's room for non-LG holy warriors in Golarion or other settings, but is there a pressing need for them to be described in the core rulebook? Wouldn't something like this be better placed in a supplement or wherever? What am I missing here?
I agree with this. The Lawful Good and Lawful Good-only paladin has been a staple of D&D since the very first supplement to OD&D in 1975 (yes, yes, it was just Lawful back then, but the point stands). Indeed, the alignment restriction is one of the most iconic elements of the class. To change it is to turn one's back on tradition and I thought part of the point of Pathfinder was to stay true to the 30+ years of accumulated story. That said, I have nothing against new paladin-like base classes for other alignments/faiths but these don't belong in the core rulebook. They're something that can and should be addressed elsewhere.
Maybe I missed this and, if so, I apologize: what exactly is the purpose of the Pathfinder RPG? Is it intended to be a set of fantasy roleplaying rules, based on the v.3.5 SRD, for gaming in Golarion or is it intended to be a new baseline set of fantasy roleplaying rules for playing in any setting? I ask because I think the Pathfinder RPG might limit its audience if it looks too much like a mere adjunct to the Pathfinder adventure paths. That's not to say I don't think there should be Golarion flavor in the rulebook, but I'd recommend that it be more like the "Greyhawk" flavor of core v.3.5, with Golarion's deities being used as examples and so on. I think it'd be wise to draw a connection between the Golarion setting and the Pathfinder RPG. However, there may well be people who are interested in a "v.3.75" game who have no interest in Golarion and, since Paizo is likely the only company pursuing such an endeavor, I think it'd be smart to write the rulebook with this in mind. But maybe this isn't Paizo's intention at all; I don't know. I think it'd be helpful if this question were answered, because it does have an impact on how many elements of the rules and their presentation play out. Thanks.
I'm not saying they are bad, but they really don't seem necessary. There's the crux of it. One of the things (among many) that rubbed me the wrong way about 4e was that it changed many things that, frankly, didn't need changing. Some of the proposed changes in the Alpha are like this too. Was there a general consensus that v.3.5 races were problematic? Maybe there was and I missed it, but, with the exception of the half-orc, I can't recall anyone complaining much about the races' abilities. Given that, I'd make fewer changes than have been made thus far -- not because the Alpha's proposals are bad but because they seem unnecessary.
I think this post pretty much mirrors my own feelings. Too much change from v.3.5 could both jeopardize backward compatibility and make Pathfinder feel much less like the game we've all been playing for the last seven years, neither of which strikes me as a good thing, particularly given the entire raison d'être of this project in the first place. There are areas of v.3.5 that are outright broken or annoying (e.g. grappling) and there are areas that could certainly do with being simplified, but, overall, v.3.5 is a solid ruleset that needs tweaks more than it needs wholesale changes or the importation of entirely new rules to replace existing ones. If I wanted that, I'd just buy 4e. None of this is to say I can't be convinced that certain things should be changed, but I'd need to hear some cogent arguments for them, more than "In my games ..." or "I've always hated the way Rule X works." Maybe it'd be useful if Jason came out and identified the areas he feels need fixing in v.3.5 and why. That might give these sorts of discussions some additional context beyond what we see in the Alpha.
Yes, this is exactly why we bothered to keep fighting the good fight on behalf of v.3.5. Now that Paizo has heard us, it's time to move on and help them ensure that the Pathfinder RPG is everything we want it to be. To those looking forward to 4e, good luck and have fun playing what you enjoy. So long as we're all happy wherever we wind up, there should be no cause for complaint from anyone.
I will neither miss skill points nor bemoan their continued existence in Pathfinder. They simply don't matter very much to me. I will only note that calculating skill points for NPCs is a tedious chore. Provided NPC/monster generation makes it easier to handle skill points, I could honestly care less about whether Pathfinder retain them or eliminates them.
A compromise would be to create feats (that a wizard can take from his bonus feats) that can improve the new at will abilities. That's not a bad idea.
Reserve feats and the like are already part of 3e. But they are not open content. Paizo would need to create their own version of reserve feats to do this, which is admittedly a possibility, but I think they'd be wiser to avoid introducing too many new rules into Pathfinder except where absolutely necessary. I'm far from convinced that this is such a case.
And that's the biggest selling point right now...backwards compatibility with most of the 3.5 material people have on their shelf, with minimal tinkering necessary. From that point of view, I'm not sure a hard-coded DR/Defense Bonus rule in the PF Core would be a good idea. Correct. I think Paizo would be ill-advised to stray too far from the basic concepts and implementations of v.3.5. By all means they should correct the things that are genuinely broken, unclear, or just plain difficult to use in play, but I see no pressing need to change the way AC works, both from a compatability standpoint and the fact that, truly, AC works fine as written. It's way down on the list of things Paizo should consider "fixing" in Pathfinder.
Max hit points + Con bonus at 1st level is fine, particularly since you've bumped the Hit Die type of many of the classes up a notch. That's probably already change enough to make backward compatibility at the low end a little wonky. Granting too many more hit points at 1st level will only exacerbate the situation. That said, I think you might be wise to include some alternate approaches as a sidebar, much in the way you've done with XP advancement. That would go a long way toward making Pathfinder modular and flexible enough to accommodate multiple playstyles, which I think is a good thing. But the default option should remain max hit points + Con bonus for new characters.
Put me in the column of people who don't find the so-called 15 minute adventuring day a problem. Indeed, for me, it's a feature of D&D and always has been. More to the point, v.3.5 is structured around it and, unless Paizo didn't really mean it when they said they wanted Pathfinder to be backward compatible, making the changes necessary to "fix" it would be difficult.
I don't want to spoil anyone's fun and, by and large, I think the comments we're seeing on the Alpha Release aren't in this vein, but I feel compelled to say, both to Paizo and to my fellow enthusiasts for this project: let's remember what this project's goal are. The Pathfinder RPG is intended to be a natural evolution of v.3.5 that corrects its most clear and problematic flaws while placing a premium on backward compatibility. Consequently, some things that you or I may not like about v.3.5 -- iterative attacks, for example -- probably can't be changed, or at least can't be changed with ease without calling into question the stated intentions for the new game. I know everyone excited by this announcement; I know I am. But we have to remain focused on the immediate project, which is correcting the universally acknowledged inadequacies of v.3.5 without creating a new game that is so different from it that the vast library of D&D and D20 books produced over the last eight years are completely worthless. My apologies for the bucket of cold water, but I think it needs to be said. Now, on with the fun!
This is a brave and positive move for Paizo and I wholeheartedly support it. I was about ready to give up on you guys. After all these months, I was sure you'd eventually go to 4e and I'd miss out on all the cool stuff you had in store for Golarion. Now I needn't worry. I'll be making good on my promises to subscribe to Pathfinder and your other lines if you stayed with v.3.5. I'm in for the long haul now. Thanks for making my day.
If system x (3.5) doesn't have an element (warforged) in setting y (Eberron), then I don't see how you can fault system z (4E) for not having them. But if system x (3.5) does have an element (Vancian magic) in setting y (Greyhawk), then I do think you can fault system z (4e) for nothing having it -- or at least fault its designers.
I can't follow this logic. The majority of settings I've seen have been presented by adding something brand new to existing rulesets during their conception. What is the original core rules 'less flexible' to? Itself? Perhaps I wasn't clear, so let me try again. Suppose there's setting X for edition Y. Setting X may make changes or additions to edition Y's rules. Once it does so, those changes become part of what makes the setting the setting it is. They are what contributes to its "feel." When edition Z comes out, the company that produced setting X decides to update the setting to edition Z. In my opinion, if edition Z cannot easily replicate the feel of setting X within a fair degree of difference, then edition Z is either a very different rules set or at least a less flexible rules set than edition Y. Greyhawk, for example, has a feel that arose out of its connection to 1e's rules. The transition to 2e was a difficult one for Greyhawk and its feel. The loss of assassins, and monks did quite a bit of violence to the setting, particularly in places like the Scarlet Brotherhood whose very character depended heavily on the existence of certain classes. 3e fixed many of 2e's problems, but, by then, the setting had irrevocably changed, in part because 2e had less flexibility than 1e. Does that make more sense?
Oh, please do carry on. I certainly wasn't advocating the end of this thread. Rather, I was expressing my preference that, even if 4e is in fact so flexible as to handle Greyhawk seamlessly, I would still rather that the setting be allowed to die a dignified death. The setting has suffered immensely since the departure of Gary from TSR and, though some talented writers have managed to sew several silk purses from the sow's ear that is From the Ashes, I don't want to bank on its ever happening again. I will add that I'm not at all convinced that Greyhawk is a uniquely good benchmark for 4e's overall flexibility and utility. My rule of thumb is this: if any setting that was viable under a previous rules set must be extensively reworked or "re-imagined" to remain viable under a new rules set, that says, at the very least, that the new rules set is quite different than the old one and, quite probably, that it's also less flexible. We don't need a theoretical Greyhawk 4e campaign setting book to answer this question for 4e; any setting updated to the new rules will do. |
