... I swear. Anyway-- initial impressions: there seems to be a lot of overlap between classes and between races. Very similar powers and concepts and so forth. My theory is that slightly different classes are 4e's answer to multiclassing. Can't multiclass? Don't worry there's another base class that just happens to be halfway between the two classes you wanted-- without the penalties. All in all, I think that is a fair way to do it. Am I wrong about what is going on here?
5 comments:
I haven't read the books so I have no idea about the workings of the system. But I've always like the idea of multiclassing. You can choose to concentrate your efforts and be a specialist who is great at one and only thing or you can be more of a generalist, disperse your efforts, and be kinda good at a number of different things. Seems like the way it would happen in real life.
But if you really wanted to do that, you would dispense with the idea of "class" entirely and use a skill based system-- which some games do.
So your theory on why D&D doesn't do it that way?
Because if they did, it wouldn't be D&D anymore. D&D's always been about the race/class system.
As someone who is playing a multi-classed character, i think multi-classing really sucks. You wind up bogging down your character in lower level BS just so you can achieve a prestige class. I would much rather have a class written for me from level one that ensures that I'm not going to get gypped in other areas along the way. The key here for 4.0 will be to continually add classes to match every taste. So far so good. Almost all of the second player's handbook is devoted to classes. There is just enough variation in there to allow for nuanced changes so that the same class can be played in different ways.
We are going to start a 4.0 game this friday, just to knock around the mechanics a bit. Then Nick is going to start up Shadow Fell on the Keep. You gotta start somewhere.
Having played a number of other complex board games outside of DND, I can see that a lot of best practices from other sources have made it into the new DND design. It looks easier to play, easier to learn, and still has all the fun that the old DND setup has. I'm excited to give it a whirl.
Post a Comment