Wednesday, March 19, 2008

And then... the low notes.

In a way I'm glad that I read the Races & Classes book before Worlds & Monsters because the latter left me feeling pretty good about 4th edition. Not that W&M was all sunshine and lollipops. I have some reservations about how this "points of light in the darkness" theme will affect the Forgotten Realms setting.

That aside (and it really is a very minor worry) W&M went a long way towards rinsing the bad taste left behind by R&C.

Bad taste #1. The Tiefling as a core race.

I suppose the Drow isn't "l33t enuf" anymore. Or maybe they've been nerfed so badly in 4e that the kidz won't want to play their Drizz't clones anymore.

Great!

Only, instead of letting it fade away like THAC0, they give us a new "dark and brooding" race with questionable morals. Wheee!

Then there was Bad taste #2. The Warlock.

Just in case a dark brooding race with an evil streak isn't enough there is now a core class to play. Yahoo.

To be fair I need to wait to see the Sorcerer class before crapping all over the Warlock. Maybe those two classes can live along side one another without any reduncy. I mean, the Sorcerer and Wizard haven't spawned any debate. And with my weakness for infernal flavored characters it's only a matter of time before I'll end up playing a tiefling. So I can't be too hypocritical in my criticism.

I just see the Warlock and Tiefling as another step toward the cookie cutter character. Here's your sheet, already filled in with everything except the name. Plug that in, pick your talent tree and build (brooding arcane striker or apathetic rockstar) and you're off. Huzz...blah.

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