Geography Of A Sundered World

When Antioch pitched his Sundered World campaign to me, the genesis of the idea was to take the cosmology detailed in the lore of Dungeons & Dragons 4^thEdition’s implied setting and remove the cosmic membrane that keeps the planes separate, creating a blasted spacescape wherein players could explore dead stars full of incomprehensible horrors, navigate chaotic elemental storms, and fight unhinged angels aimlessly wandering their dead gods ruined domain.

Since then, he and I have been pitching, reversing, bolstering and molding ideas back and forth which have sprouted into a lot of the lore that has been posted on this blog space, and you readers have offered some invaluable insights on.

One of the particular areas of detail that Antioch and I are trying to hammer out, along with our friend and resident cartographer Victor, and hopefully the people who read and comment on this blog, is the makeup of the Sundered World’s “landscape” for lack of a better term.

Previous to the mysterious cataclysm that tore open the veil between realms, the Sundered World was made up of five(ish) distinct planes, each with it’s own character and inhabitants:

The celestial heavens of Empyrean, and the infernal hells of Apollyon were a vast expanse of stars and free floating domains where devils and gods dwelt, along with their angelic servitors and the souls of the devout. The astral plane was a magnificient realm of opulent ivory palaces floating upon magical golden nimbi, and stygian black iron citadels wreathed in blue hellfire.

The Maelstrom was a roiling mass of elements, constantly colliding and reforming into new matter. It was believed that from this storm of constant destruction and reformation the rest of the universe was thrust into being. This is where elementals lived and thrived. At it’s very heart, the eye of the elemental storm, is a vast, unfathomably deep well of utter darkness called the abyss. This is where demons made their home, frequently making incursions into the space beyond.

Faerie was a wild and verdant mirror realm to the Prime Material plane, where magic courses through the roots of the great godtrees and the loamy soil like blood through a man’s veins. Before the Sundering, mortalkind who found themselves in the fey realm either by wandering through faerie rings or through design, often became transfixed with the beauty of the faerie landscape and found themselves wandering and wondering endlessly, until they lay down and die of old age many decades later. The fey creatures who made this realm their home, are often so intuned with the freely flowing mystical forces of Faerie that they possess innate magical gifts. Creatures like Elves, gnomes, dryads, unicorns, etc.

The Netherworld was another mirror realm to the Prime Material plane. Where the realm of Faerie is teeming with life and energy, the shadowy Netherworld absorbs it creating a bleak and funereal landscape of sepia and grey. Often referred to by mortals as Purgatory, or the Land Of The Dead, this realm sounded a clarion call to the souls of the dead – a pilgrimage on their way to wherever the were going after their mortal clock winds down. Many of the inhabitants of the Netherworld were ghosts and specters, but there were mortal inhabitants as well. Shades are humanoids who are naturally imbued with umbral nether energies much like fey creatures are imbued with magic.

The Prime Material plane was the native home of humankind, and the world most like our own. It is the nexus point where all other realms meet, each touching the plane in some way. This was also the center and the strongest point of the Axis Mundi, which is what connected the planes to one another, but also kept them separate. This made the Prime a place of strategic significance to imperialistically driven races from the other planes. In fact, many of the races who made their home on the Prime Material plane were actually refugees from other planes who grew acclimated to the realm over the course of generations.

And then there are the things from Beyond. Maddeningly strange and incomprehensible things native to somewhere beyond the planes. Alien horrors that view all life in the known universe with mocking contempt and disdain. Abominations that feed on fear and insanity just as they consume flesh and bone.

Though the details may have long faded from memory of even the oldest beings, there is a reason that Celestials and Primordial eventually stopped warring with eachother. There is a reason that scores upon scores of angels and devils entered aberrant stars to fight side by side. There is a reason that the instinct of demons is to flee away from the Abyss.

This was the makeup of the multiverse before the Sundering. Now, the celestial heavens are a vast sea of stars wherein pockets of space that used to belong to other planes now float like islands in a sidereal ocean.

So what then would this blasted starscape actually look like if you were to map it? Well – we don’t know exactly. Antioch and I both have different ideas which we’ll detail here and hopefully get some of our readers to weigh in, as your input has proven to be a valuable asset to us in the creative process.

Antioch’s take:

Antioch envisions the geography of the Sundered World as a vast expanse of space in layers with free-floating motes of lands from other planes suspended therein. The uppermost layer is comprised of starry space, while the bottommost layer is a roiling cauldron of wild elemental energies descending into the great Abyss. Picture if you will, the universe as a tea kettle sitting on a gas burner.

His take springs from the idea that players will be faced with potential perils on all sides, with the Abyss at one end, and the boundless mysteries of deep space beyond.

Gizmoduck’s take:

The picture I have of the Sundered World in my headspace is a similarly immeasurable span of starry space that is bisected with a great diagonal gash of wild elemental energies, as though space had been slashed with a great sword, and is bleeding fire and ice and living earth.

My idea is that domains would be situated on one side of this scar or the other, and that travel between them is a perilous prospect…sort of like mariners traversing the worst stormy sea you can imagine and oh yeah there’s demons.

So there you have the basic mental maps of our grandiose cosmic ruin. We’d love to hear what you guys and gals and arthropods think.

D&D Next Q&A: Racial Mods, Clerics, & Monsters

Rodney talks racial ability score penalties (specifically, the lack thereof), unarmored clerics, and the creative and balancing process behind monsters.

Ability Score Penalties
I was really happy that 4th Edition did away with pointless racial penalties, which resulted in a lot of interesting and–perhaps more importantly–effective race and class combinations. I always cite the halfling fighter as a prime example of something that just did not work in 3rd Edition due to both her penalty to Strength, and a hefty collection of other penalties based on size; smaller weapons, a penalty to Speed (made worse when compounded with heavier armor), and a penalty to lots of checks that tended to come up when fighting brutish monsters like ogres and dragons.

4th Edition made it possible to have a readily effective and thematic halfling fighter without any optimization involved, because while you did not get a bonus to Strength, you did not get a penalty (though you did get a bonus to Dexterity, which made you better off with light and heavy blades). This change predictably did not result in a slew of halfling fighters (or dwarf bards, half-orc wizards, elf barbarians, etc). What Rodney says makes sense; races with the right bonuses and features are more likely to get picked for certain classes, so why bother penalizing a race so that it is bad at others?

In other words, just because a halfling makes a competent–and, depending on how you make it, thematic–fighter does not mean that it becomes my default choice, or even one of my top five or whatever. There are still humans, dwarves, goliaths, half-orcs, warforged, minotaurs, and more that have modifiers and features way better suited for the job.

The “White Mage” Cleric
I was one of the people disappointed by all the universal armor and weapon proficiencies, and am all for a clerics god playing a greater role in what she can do; war clerics should (probably?) be better at fighting than clerics who worship gods of healing, trickery, and love. Turn Undead also needs to go. I cannot see a god of trickery giving two coppers about what happens to undead critters.

Monster Design
The current process basically sounds like what I always assumed they did, at least in 4th Edition: try to give monsters a noteworthy shtick to help differentiate them from the rest. In 3rd Edition fighting goblins was basically the same as kobolds. There were both Small-sized and either threw things at you or tried to stab you. That was basically it.

In 4th Edition goblins could scramble out of the way when you missed them, and kobolds could easily scamper about. It might not sound like much, but what it translated into was goblins breaking out of tight spots when it was not even their turn, while kobolds could easily get flanking and escape.

Speaking of 4th Edition, I greatly preferred its stat blocks. Easy to navigate, and I never needed to reference another book in order to make it work. I also liked that a lot of similar monsters had powers with synergy. Made them a lot of fun to play.

Internal stress-tests are always good. Hopefully they are looking into shambles of zombies taking forever to kill by low-level characters.

Ninja-Assassin

No, not the craptacular movie, but something of actual merit. Since I have been extensively playing D&D since 2nd Edition I have read plenty of articles on ninjas, ninja-like things, and their place in the D&D world so I’m basically skipping to the crunchy parts. Unfortunately there are only six new powers, two new magic items, and a new weapon (fortunately it was already easy to make a ninja, even before the article was considered):

• Ninja-to Rush (level 1 at-will): “Ninja-to” in this case is a short sword. It is a straightforward attack that can be used while charging, and you gain combat advantage if you jumped, fell, or flew on the turn you use it.
• Poisonous Shuriken (level 1 at-will): While you do not add your Dex modifier to the damage roll, you can attack 1-3 creatures. Another good part is that if you use poison, it applies to all of them.
• Whirling Kusari-gama (level 1 at-will): This is a two-parter. The first attack targets Reflex, deals Dex damage, and knocks the target prone. Even better, you can followup with another attack that deals damage (sans your Dex modifier). All in all, very evocative in its execution.
• Smoke Bomb (level 2 encounter): This is a rad ability that lets you create a lightly obscured zone all around you after an enemy moves next to you, and then shift your speed. As with whirling kusari-gama, this is a very evocative power.
• Feathery Tread (level 6 encounter): You float until the start of your next turn, ignoring difficult terrain and can stand on water.
• Veil of a Thousand Faces (level 10 at-will): You create a disguise, and gain a bonus on Bluff checks to avoid detection.
• Manual of Ninjutsu (level 3+ uncommon): Basically a ki-focus with brutal 1 when you use assassin strike. Higher level ones let you reroll lower numbers.
• The ineffable Secret of Death (level 15+ rare): For an opener the crit dice are upped to d10s, and it deals bonus necrotic damage against anything you have combat advantage against. One daily power lets you maximize you assassin strike damage against a bloodied target, while the other lets you target the lowest defense on the target. Finally, an encounter powerlets you turn insubstantial and gain phasing after dropping someone. Very sweet.
• Kusari-gama: A flail/light blade that deals 1d8/1d6 damage, with the defensive, reach, and off-hand properties. 

Its a nice article that makes we really want to run something using Oriental Adventures. Really looking forward to that runepriest article, now.

A Closer Look

Quick side tangent: has anyone tried taking a page from Gamma World, giving D&D characters 2-3 set ability scores and rolling the rest? For example, for a heavy blade fighter might have a Strength of 18 and Dexterity of 16–before bonuses–and rolling the others. This could create some odd results, with a fighter or paladin having a really high Intelligence (and thereby making them better suited for some multiclassing), but also have more than one below average ability score. Anyway, just some food for thought.

In the comments section of this post, Gerald asks that I go back and post something in regards to how I might “develop and improve” the system which currently exists. While I cannot say for certainty that I can improve it (probably not), I will try to explain in better detail why I do not like Cook’s concept, and what I might do differently to make it better in my opinion. First, let us compare how Passive Perception works now, and how Cook’s concept changes it.

Currently if a player wants to try and notice something, she makes a Perception check, and if the result meets or beats the DC, she notices it. Characters automatically notice stuff that their Passive Perception meets or beats.

Cook’s pitch as, I understand it, works as follows:

The DM assigns a rank to something like, say, a hidden passage, and the rank to find it is 3. If a player’s rank is higher than 3, they notice it automatically. If it is 3, then they have to roll to see if they can find it. If it is less than 3 then they cannot normally find it unless they interact with the object. Where I am a little fuzzy on the details is whether a player with a Perception rank of 2 can get away with specifying that they want to check the statue for hidden passages, thereby lowering the rank to a 2 (and allowing the a roll), or if they need to describe how they are interacting with it; pushing, checking for scratches or seams, wiggling the teeth, etc.

As I said before, the main difference is that Cook essentially gives the characters a bonus for describing how they interact or search something, though his theory is that it will encourage players to interact with stuff rather than just say, “I’m looking for hidden passages,” and making a roll.

However it is really just another form of system mastery, which given his track record is not surprising to me. Players are going to very logically compile a routine that they will go through whenever they encounter a statue, door, look for a hidden passage, etc. From a narrative point it makes perfect sense: a party of professional grave robbers is going to have a routine that they will go through, so it becomes less interacting with the environment so much as taking time to go through a list of procedures. And when the players start a new campaign, what then? Do you allow the players to just toss the list at you again, or do you make them pretend to not know what to do, like how some DMs try and force players to not act on knowledge for classic monsters like trolls, mind flayers, beholders, and the like?

Talk of fleeting system master aside, Cook’s idea of “Zorking” the terrain can work in the current system by simply adding guidelines for giving characters a bonus on their skill checks for describing their actions and hitting the right notes; there is no need to restructure the rules to change from a numerical bonus–which has the added benefit of granularity–to ranks. Basically the only meaningful thing his concept adds is the possibility that players might go into more detail when making a skill check.


So getting around to what Gerald asked me to do in the first place, what would I do were I in charge of it (or at least trying to pitch ideas at WotC)? Currently I do not feel that the system needs changing or improvement. It does what it is supposed to do, does it well, and follows the basic concept from other games I have seen.

I guess if I had to think of something I would give characters a bonus for having certain backgrounds or training in relevant skills? For example, characters trained in Dungeoneering might get a bonus on noticing secret doors in structures, while characters with Nature might get a bonus on Heal checks in the wilderness. Makes sense and might help avoid skill-spamming, where all the characters just try using Aid Another without care for what the bonus or penalty is–though to avoid this I always tell my players that if they try Aid Another and it fails, that they instead impose a -2 penalty.

"Essential" Support

Two parts of the same rules system.

Various gamers don’t like the Essentials line for various reasons; martial classes without daily powers and limited choices being among the top two that I have seen. That I can get behind. Some people are very happy with the diverse choices available to classes following the original progression method.

What I do not get is gamers who dislike Essentials because they think that it is taking support away from “original 4th Edition” content. I dislike this stance it because it not only implies that the content out of Essentials and the books that came before it is somehow incompatible or different, but also because it is wrong.

First, new content for the cleric was fairly recently released, but material for the ardent has also appear post-Essentials as well. This is indicative that WotC has not “abandoned” older classes, and I would expect to see new stuff for older classes at some point in the future, not that some classes–particularly the fighter or wizard–exactly need it.

Another important thing that I have seen willfully dismissed is content that is compatible for both subclasses and the parent class. For example, exploits for knights and slayers can be taken by fighters, and vice versa. Some people were upset because Heroes of Shadow allegedly lacked support for older classes. They had been expecting a necromancer class, or a necromancer build for wizards.

Unfortunately, they had to “settle” for a slew of new spells for wizards and warlocks, prayers for the cleric, a vampire class, and more. I know Mearls has stated that the new design would be used going forward, but that does not mean that they won’t revisit older classes, create a class using the “classic” design, or try something new; they are not forced stick to one method. I am glad that they decided to branch out and give something new a shot, and actually like some of the subclasses and the vampire class (which works out when you actually play it).

Legend & Lore: The Many Faces of D&D

Mearls is of the belief that D&D is at its best when it manages to cater to as many styles of play as possible. While trying to please as many players as possible is a noble design goal, I find that games that try to be many things at once often fail to adequately represent most (if not all) of the play styles that they are trying to support. In other words, I think that good games set out with a goal in mind and run with it. For example, I felt that Brutal Legend tried too hard to be both an action game and a real-time strategy, and consequently felt underwhelming on both fronts.

Personally, I like abstraction because it helps avoid the tedium of tracking often trivial things, as well as provide a result without bogging down the game. I don’t want to roll to hit a creature, determine hit location, determine ht severity, and with both results (hopefully) determine a conclusion. I’m not even a big critical-hit-chart type of guy, because ultimately it is just going to hose over players even in the short run. I guess placing myself on the chart I’d fall about in the middle of the story-tactics axis (because I prefer my games to have plenty of both), favoring the abstraction end of the spectrum.

Now that I mention it, I disagree with the story-tactics axis for the simple reason that I do no understand why a game cannot effectively deliver both. Immersion and abstraction I get, but Mass Effect 2 both had a compelling story and highly tactical combat that required the use of cover and your entire squad’s abilities in order to survive. I think using a radar chart would be better suited to mapping out an edition’s strengths and weaknesses, because it could both allow for more than four categories and inform us of how well it catered to other categories; I agree that 4th Edition does well for tactics and abstraction, but also think that it handles the story part superbly.

Ultimately I do not think it is a good idea to try and shoehorn a game into too many play styles, and instead focus your efforts on making sure that the game is fun for what it is supposed to do. Maybe creating alternate rules ala Unearthed Arcana could be used to add “realism” to the game (as well as other rules)? Honestly, I think I’d prefer if WotC would make another game that uses D&D mechanics that work, while modifying it as necessary like they did with Gamma World.

My Ideal Digital D&D

These pregens were WAY cooler, back in the day.

In the wake of Daggerdale’s disappointment, I decided to write up a list of stuff I’d like to see–and not see–in a digital game adaptation of D&D.

GENRE
Personally I prefer an action-role playing hybrid like Mass Effect and Dragon Age, but even action games can be a blast if done right as long as they mix in some sort of advancement system, such as God of War or Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. Regardless it would need to offer meaningful decisions during character creation, because as fun as those old D&D arcade games were I might want to play a fighter that uses something other than a sword and shield (or is of another race, for that matter).

SETTING
My general preference here is at the least no Forgotten Realms. Almost every D&D takes place in Forgotten Realms, and frankly if I wasn’t already tired of the setting on the table I’d be tired of it by now. Going with the implied setting would allow for a lot of creative freedom, though I’d like to see more of Eberron than just some parts of Xen’drik and Athas would look pretty badass on screen. Basically, try something new–which in this case doesn’t technically have to be new, but merely another pre-fabbed setting.

It is okay to venture out of the Realms, have a set character, and still have a successful game.

CHARACTER BUILDING
Just stick to the existing model out of Player’s Handbook and let players pick their race, class, feats, skills, etc. There’s really no reason to deviate from this model, even if you’re doing an action-only game. Provide at least four races and classes, each with two or more class features to choose from for a larger variety. Which races and classes depends on the style and setting of the game: In the implied setting I’d expect your typical fare of human, elf, dwarf, fighter, cleric, wizard, etc. If you’re going with a horror game in Eberron’s Shadow Marches? Give us half-orcs, shifters, druids, barbarians, and the like.

Being able to pick a gender wouldn’t be unreasonable (even for an action game), but for the love of god avoid stupid hairstyles like mohawks, or whatever the fuck those “double-mohawks” are called. Skills could have applications even in an action-game; for example Endurance might help shake off poisons, while Athletics might help you climb or swim faster. Finally when it comes to feats, just give us an assortment of the usual fare along with a handful of class-specific stuff.

MECHANICS
I expect the game to utilize the actual D&D mechanics as much as possible, especially if it is a turn-based game. Even if you go with real-time–or whatever you call real-time that lets you pause to make decisions in combat–you can still make it work, and Daggerdale really fell flat in this department by not including action points, opportunity attacks, healing surges, power resource management (or well, powers), skills, and probably some other stuff I’m probably overlooking.

• In a real-time game action points could be used to just increase your attack/movement speed for a short period of time, or even linked to an ability in order to instantly use it (ie, ignore cooldown time). 
• Neverwinter Nights had a way of handling opportunity attacks, so ’nuff said.
• Healing surges would be great for not having to lug around 50+ healing potions of various grades, as well as encourage better tactics and resource management.
• Encounter powers would refresh once an encounter has concluded, kind of like how in Dragon Age your health/mana/stamina just max out after a short period of time once you wrap up combat.
• Daily powers could be recharged at the end of an adventure, or if the players find a “campsite”, which would be areas of an adventure zone where players would be able to take an extended rest, probably just once. They would be stuff like bedrooms, secluded glades, safe houses, secret rooms, pocket dimensions, airships cabins, or any other locale that you as a DM might let your players hunker down for a night and recuperate. Some might prompt for random encounters.

ADVENTURES
Actual adventuring occurs when the players find a hook and actually decide to head out, fast-traveling  to an adventure “zone” or module like how you go from place to place in Mass Effect and Dragon Age. Fits the theme of D&D, where the DM just glosses over lengthy travel times, and you could still work in random encounters (they did it in Fallout and Dragon Age).

Adventures would have minor and major quests, a set number of encounters, and a set amount of treasure, again, like Mass Effect and Dragon Age. I prefer because it helps ushering you through the story without a bunch of senseless side treks and padding to distract you, a pitfall that I’ve run into all too often in games like Grand Theft Auto and Assassin’s Creed. Adventures could have optional quests that could provide extra rewards or change how the story plays out (like killing a monster or having a NPC die). On the other hand, I could see small side-treks that operate like delves; unrelated to the plot and only a few encounters.

Treasure
Use the loot system as written. Characters already have a lot of flexibility without having to mill through damaged this and cracked that, which is just made worse by the fact that Daggerdale also had shitty magic loot. Restricting magic items to the four or so that players normally get each level also helps make them more meaningful when finally discovered.

CONCLUSION
I’d like a D&D game that allows for the customization of the paper-and-pencil version, complete with an actual plot that I give a shit about. This shouldn’t be too difficult, and games in the past–Planescape: Torment comes to mind–have come close on the mechanics front. If the game must be a straight forward action-hack-fest, then at least provide a somewhat discernible story with some character development that matters: four pre-fabs, mostly worthless feats, and a smattering of “powers” wasn’t sufficient years ago.

Lair Assault (And Haters)

There has been some very selective and deliberate misinterpretation about a new Organized Play even that will take place in September, Lair Assault. As I hear it, Lair Assault hearkens back to when D&D games were ran at conventions as a sort of tournament, where players competed to see who could get the farthest before randomly dying to an ambiguous DM ruling. Just to be clear, this event does not eclipse Encounters, and stores don’t even have to have specific dates; they can run it at their leisure, and participation is optional.

Par for the course, haters are going to hate.

Apparently this information is being levied as–to put it loosely–evidence that 4th Edition is for min-maxers. Weren’t haters already proclaiming this before 4th Edition was even released? In his favor, he does fall back on the MMO comparison, which is to say he brings nothing new to the table that wasn’t already argued to death three years ago. I guess it was alright to build a character with little to no thought given to character development “back in the day”, but later editions are expected to enforce this otherwise traditionally optional and vague creation step. I would point out that there are pages to developing a character’s personality and motivations in Player’s Handbook (and other books and articles), but he wraps up the post by stating that he is not willing to entertain anyone’s comments that disagrees with him. That’s fine, he sounds like the kind of guy that would just run off with the goalposts anyway.

I did find it funny that he “predicted” that content from the cancelled line of D&D books would be used in Fortune Cards. The fact that he can actually sit there and congratulate himself tells me that he has both never used (or even looked at Fortune Cards), and that his predictions are as accurate as Harold Camping’s. Seriously, nothing on any of the cards I own features material that looks like it came from a class or magic item, and none of them have advice or instructions on character-building. This is not exactly rocket science; glancing over a few cards would suffice.

Classic grognard trolling. He does not like the new game, and so irrationally jumps on everything he can and tries to shove it in your face as “proof” that the new game is a board game/skirmish game/MMO-on-paper, and that whatever edition he happens to play is the real deal. I remember reading the OD&D books a year or two ago; there wasn’t any rules for towns or social interaction of any kind, and you just kind of started in front of the dungeon. Presumably if you died, you rolled up a new character and ran in again. Sounds like digital game re-spawnage to me.

Edit: The best analogy that I can find for their bat-shit logic is that because WotC creates an optional, minor program to cater to a crowd that may want to engage in hardcore character optimization from time to time, that D&D is now a game for people that want to engage in hardcore character optimization. If they add in optional cards that you can choose to use, or not, it is now a card game? WotC has not changed the rules or removed any content. It is not unreasonable to think that people who play D&D play other games, and might enjoy varying styles of play.

Going off this (bat-shit) logic, why wasn’t 2nd Edition labeled a card game when they made the Blood War card game, or Spellfire?

Class Compendium: Feats and Fighters

Okay, so the (mostly) new feats aren’t all that bad. I can see martial subclasses with power strike swapping it out for something more substantial, like come and get it (yes, even post-errata) or rain of blows. On the other hand, I really can’t see fighters swapping out their stuff for power strike, especially for the cost of a feat (though maybe Power Strike Specialization is worth it?). The most confusing feat goes to School of Magic Apprentice (and all the rest): you swap out your implement training for a mage’s magic school class feature. A mage and wizard are both basically the same damned thing, separated only by emphasizing implements over school mastery.

My question is, why the hell not just play the one with the thing you want the most? There really isn’t any other pair of classes I can compare this to, but the best example that comes to mind is a fighter taking a feat that makes him a ranger. This just sounds like they are trying to complete the entire list, you know? Make sure everyone gets a feat. It’s great that WotC is trying to provide options that make classes and subclasses bleed together (even more so than they already do ::cough:: interchangeable powers ::cough::), but these don’t seem to contribute anything to anyone.

In other news, the fighter is now called the weaponmaster. Functionally it works exactly the same, daily exploits and all. This article just runs through the entire 1-30 process “Essentials-style”, complete with a step-by-step walkthrough and giving each exploit extra verbiage. The main thing of interest are the updates: some things get clarified, others (like come and get it) got “nerfed”.

Wizards Versus Fighters

Fighter and wizard relations have improved a lot over the past few years, what with fighters actually being viable options throughout the course of play (and wizards being relegated to “merely” a compelling play style, as opposed to a god-in-training). Before, fighters were easier to play because they only really had one thing to do: make attack rolls, followed by damage rolls if things worked out alright. I’m told they also had awesome saving throws, but I only really remember 3rd Edition, where an 8th-level warblade failed a Will save against a charm monster spell, even though he rolled like, 13 before modifiers.

I get the idea (and perhaps the intent) behind it: fighters are harder to kill, but can’t do much at first, while wizards were hard as hell to keep alive, but could do lots of shit if you managed to pull it off. However, this is something that we learned in my first game design class not to do, and I cannot fathom how anyone would have fun basically carrying another player around just so they could dominate the game for you later. No, I much prefer things as they are now: you pick a class with the comfort that you won’t be rendered obsolete after ironically accruing enough XP.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind a game with options designed to cater to new players, or to keep things simple for the casual player. I just don’t think that a game should reward players that have the time and inclination to devote to system mastery. That leads to a handful of accepted classes and accompanying builds, and likewise serves to potentially alienate new and inexperienced players. To me, Essentials did this just fine with some of the classes. Players that don’t want a lot of choices or a relatively simple character have plenty to choose from, and they don’t suck after 5th-level.