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4th Edition's biggest flaw was that they made every class the same.
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Disclaimer. I'm not trying to start up a complaint or edition war here. Or looking for feedback. Just voicing my thoughts and opinions ramblingly. You know, I will never really got this complaint about 4e. "I throw fireballs that hurt more when I get hit back" versus "I'm awesome at backstabbing and swashbuckling" versus Drizzt-style blade dance all feel different to me. But this is neither here, nor there, and totally unimportant.
This is what's important to me:
The one thing that I found I was really attracted to with the playtest? The races. Yes, I know that, right now, they're very basic, tolken-esk options. But I really like how they're designed now. It feels like you get a reward for playing to the archetype, rather than some odd, unused proficencies that never came up in play. Yes, my dear high elves, I'm looking at you and your longsword proficiency from editions of old. I'm not giving you to my wizard when I want to cast spells, and I get you from my class when I want to get up close and personal.
And, oh! The the way which we can add new subraces! Shiny! I'm tempted to slip in a drow subrace for PCs using the system. Quick, easy, painless. It also makes it super easy to shift to other settings, as well- replacing the current ones from Greyhawk (I'm assuming base game is in Greyhawk) in the five elves (drow, sun, moon, wood, wild) from Faerun is a simple matter, or three or four different cultures in Eberron (Undying, Dragonmarked, mercenary, Vol). I find its a rather elegant system.
I'm looking forward to see how they handle the Next version of tieflings - 2e had a wild chart of options to chose from (thank you, Planescape!). 3.x, the version many are familiar with, with the ever popular fiendish rogue (anyone remember Neeshka?). And our 4e incarnation, with a new history, intimidating presence, favored weapons, and firey wrath. Three wildly different incarnations that don't match up. I'll be interesting to see how much of each filters down. Maybe they'll make a few subraces for each incarnation? One with sneaky darkness, one with firey wrath, one with charming powers? Hey, most tieflings in pre-4e were the children of succubi and incubi.
In case you can't tell, I'm a huge fan of the race. One of my favorite things to do is focus on racial feats and classes. I am told that, back in the early days of the game, your race was your class - the dwarf was always a warrior, the elf a swordmage/arcane archer. Don't know how true that is, but no matter. In my opinion, the game swung the opposite way - where race progressively failed to matter in place of class. I like seeing both matter, where being an elf has a distinct effect on your fighter as opposed to an agile human.
To me, it feels like they're moving in the right direction. Though, still not a fan of how they're handling humans. In Next or any previous editions. Why not actually pick a culture for humans instead of "dabbler in everything?"
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On to classes! Well, looking at the paladin, where we have holy, dark, and nature knights, I'm left wondering a bit if we're going to have the same spread for cleric-like classes. Holy clerics with their healing, druids with nature powers, and necromantic priests like we did in 3e. Good, neutral, evil.
But, what about my paladin of the Neutral God of Knowledge? How does the green knight fit there? Can I even be a paladin of the God of Knowledge anymore? We can't do the the paladins of freedom or slaughter, either. All in all, I must say that I'm a bit leery of the warden - we have druids to cover the nature priest angle. That's kind of the first five words in their write up. So, it feels odd to group nature knights with the same as the holy and death knights - besides, isn't nature-guardian the ranger stick to begin with? And why can you be a lawful good warden, but not a lawful evil one? Nature's not inherently good. Actually, what is with the "lawful" requirement on some classes, but others have no such restrictions? Even the druid class has suggestions on alignment, but it doesn't actually -require- you to?
I'm finding the entire alignment thing to be annoyingly lopsided to the point I just want to ignore it.
Nice to see Mystra is making a return - she's getting a mention in the cleric's write up! Then again, Myrkul is dead, and he's mentioned too. Though, I wouldn't mind seeing Kelemvor getting knocked down and replaced again! Stupid new gods... stupid Cyric *wanders off mumbling*
Oh, and one more small thing...
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Originally Posted by svipdag
Lol yeah, if they stuck with "D&D Next" I might need to boycott it out of allergy to stupid names. I mean, it immediately becomes dated as soon as it's released.
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The Nintendo Wii was originally code named "Revolution" if memory serves. A pretty neat name, I thought. And then... Wii.
Names can go either way - it can get worse!