I never did comment on Griff's previous post on the Githzerai, which is a bit odd, since they've been one of my favorite races/monsters for many years, ever since the Gith races appeared on the cover of the Fiend Folio. With the second Player's Handbook 3 debut article, the githzerai are reintroduced, and they're still as interesting as ever.
Quiet, terse and brooding? Check. Excessively austere? Check. A no-brainer as a monk (the one class that I always want to play, but never seem to)? Check. Racial history of oppression and rebellion? Check. What's not to love? Even the racial power, Iron Mind, is terrific, both representing the build of the race as well as providing a very useable, useful ability in combat.
The psychic/psionic links harken back to the original creature, as well as helping to fit even better with the 4e monk. I have to say, though, that while psionics have somewhat redeemed itself in Griff's eyes, to me, it's Just Another Power Source, becoming, in a sense, less unique than in previous editions of D&D.
The racial feats, as they do for many races, either modify or enhance the use of the racial power, which is something that I've really only noticed in passing, since I tend either play a race like human, which is lacking a racial power, or have so many plans for the feats in the character's build that I ignore/overlook what goodies might be available through my racial power. The githzerai's racial feats provide many interesting possibilities, which might actually be a problem, since the racial power itself is very nice as it is!
And after all that, I don't think I'd play a githzerai, nor allow one in a campaign I was running. The reason? Their alienness to the "regular" world. Sure, you can forgive one "odd" race once in a while, provided the rest of the party was "normal", and the githzerai took pains to hide his or her origin. Playing in a solo campaign would also work, with a background of outcast githzerai, travelling on the material plane looking for yadda yadda. And higher-level campaigns would also work, if they started in foreign planes, where the githzerai's appearance wouldn't be so odd. Okay, so I've provided a bunch of exceptions to my "no githzerai" rule, and they're all possibilities with my group, but I would be interested to see a 1st-level, non-planes-originating campaign containing a githzerai -- oh, unless the whole concept is "a party of misfit races in the regular world, trying to make a life, fulfilling their dreams, and avoiding further subjugation by mind flayers."
Showing posts with label psionics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label psionics. Show all posts
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Can you read my mind?
The Psion.
I wasn't expecting much when I got a look at the preview article for this "new" PHB3 class. I've never liked psionics as they always felt like a tacked on re-branded magic. Points instead of spell slots? That's creative. /sarcasm
However, after the preview of the monk class I was actually pretty excited about seeing what they'd do with the psion.
Right off the bat, I really like the new format with the designer's comments. So I'm going to focus on that rather than the nitty gritty of the psion class.
One thing that struck me is how the text refers to "psionic magic" but much of the commentary suggests that the psionic power source is more of a mental discipline. Which is it WotC? Because if it's the former...
I do like the class features of the Psion. Discipline Focus provides a couple of cool little powers, at least I'm guessing they're "little". I just wish they had given us another example to look at next to Telepathy. Andy Collins does give a hint on what the powers gained through Telepathy Focus do, so that's a bonus.
On the surface of it, Psionic Augmentation is a grand idea. Take an At-will power and with a little extra effort you can boost or change the effects. Excellent. Should be just the thing to spice up the otherwise bland spamming of the At-Wills.
On the downside, much like Crwth I thought that the swapping of Encounter Powers for augmentation points was pretty lame. While I like the idea of Augmentation the way they're doing it seems like a needlessly complicated system, and one that directly opposes the whole 4E simplicity. Crwth offers a good suggestion here but I'd go one further and eliminate the unnecessary bookkeeping of a points system. Make the Psionic Augmentation feature into the classes Encounter Power, with the appropriate levels (Augmentation I, Aug II, Aug III etc...) When the character uses a psion At-Will power the player can then augment it as his/her encounter power. The effect would be up to the level of the highest augmentation the character has attained.
The table on how many points one gets at what level is just... well, it's bad. I had to read it a couple of times before figuring out what the hell they were trying to say. While I'm not the brightest bulb on the tree, I'm not exactly retarded either. Surely there was a plainer/clearer way for WotC to get that info across. It was actually the commentary from Stephen Schubert that finally cleared it up.
The rest of the commentary is irksome. They took the old spellcasting and made it total vanilla but they brought across the 3.5 psionic point system? Because, according to Mike Mearls they "wanted to hit on the same compelling features that made psionics popular before"? Seriously? Psionics was compelling and popular? Am I that out of touch?
It also felt like time to "push the game in a new direction". Okay, I like that idea. The aim is noble but isn't this "new direction" the same old direction of 3.5? Sure, the "new" system, as Andy points out, still gives the player At-Wills to use after the points are all spent but that's just going to feel like a let-down. After firing off augmented versions for first half of an encounter who's going to enjoy going back to the plain Jane vanilla version?
Although Crwth concluded his Psion post with a tongue in cheek barb at your's truly, I am seriously thinking of giving the Psion a playtest just to see if my fears are baseless.
I wasn't expecting much when I got a look at the preview article for this "new" PHB3 class. I've never liked psionics as they always felt like a tacked on re-branded magic. Points instead of spell slots? That's creative. /sarcasm
However, after the preview of the monk class I was actually pretty excited about seeing what they'd do with the psion.
Right off the bat, I really like the new format with the designer's comments. So I'm going to focus on that rather than the nitty gritty of the psion class.
One thing that struck me is how the text refers to "psionic magic" but much of the commentary suggests that the psionic power source is more of a mental discipline. Which is it WotC? Because if it's the former...
I do like the class features of the Psion. Discipline Focus provides a couple of cool little powers, at least I'm guessing they're "little". I just wish they had given us another example to look at next to Telepathy. Andy Collins does give a hint on what the powers gained through Telepathy Focus do, so that's a bonus.
On the surface of it, Psionic Augmentation is a grand idea. Take an At-will power and with a little extra effort you can boost or change the effects. Excellent. Should be just the thing to spice up the otherwise bland spamming of the At-Wills.
On the downside, much like Crwth I thought that the swapping of Encounter Powers for augmentation points was pretty lame. While I like the idea of Augmentation the way they're doing it seems like a needlessly complicated system, and one that directly opposes the whole 4E simplicity. Crwth offers a good suggestion here but I'd go one further and eliminate the unnecessary bookkeeping of a points system. Make the Psionic Augmentation feature into the classes Encounter Power, with the appropriate levels (Augmentation I, Aug II, Aug III etc...) When the character uses a psion At-Will power the player can then augment it as his/her encounter power. The effect would be up to the level of the highest augmentation the character has attained.
The table on how many points one gets at what level is just... well, it's bad. I had to read it a couple of times before figuring out what the hell they were trying to say. While I'm not the brightest bulb on the tree, I'm not exactly retarded either. Surely there was a plainer/clearer way for WotC to get that info across. It was actually the commentary from Stephen Schubert that finally cleared it up.
The rest of the commentary is irksome. They took the old spellcasting and made it total vanilla but they brought across the 3.5 psionic point system? Because, according to Mike Mearls they "wanted to hit on the same compelling features that made psionics popular before"? Seriously? Psionics was compelling and popular? Am I that out of touch?
It also felt like time to "push the game in a new direction". Okay, I like that idea. The aim is noble but isn't this "new direction" the same old direction of 3.5? Sure, the "new" system, as Andy points out, still gives the player At-Wills to use after the points are all spent but that's just going to feel like a let-down. After firing off augmented versions for first half of an encounter who's going to enjoy going back to the plain Jane vanilla version?
Although Crwth concluded his Psion post with a tongue in cheek barb at your's truly, I am seriously thinking of giving the Psion a playtest just to see if my fears are baseless.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
The Psion
D&D Insiders just got a sneak peak at the Psion class that will be coming out next year in the Player's Handbook 3. As soon as I saw it, I giggled inside, because I know how much Griff loves psionics... I was a bit excited to see what they had done with it, since the Psion is the only psionic character I've played in the last 20 years.
Right off the bat, I was wrong about where the Psion was going to place in the scheme of things. And, right off the bat, I got my back up when I read that the Psion has no encounter attack powers.
Until now, all classes have followed a very regular formula of what they get at each level - at-will here, daily there, new one here, new one there. So when I read that the Psion wasn't taking part in this, I immediately saw 4e going the way of 3.5, with level advancement charts for every class looking wildly different. Instead of the encounter power, the Psion gets power points, reminiscent of the points used in 3.5. These points are used to augment the at-will powers that the Psion has, basically letting him or her turn the at-wills into a pseudo-encounter power, in terms of strength and effect.
This is actually quite interesting, giving the Psion quite a bit of flexibility. The article says that, overall, the resulting effect is that the Psion is going to do as much damage as any other Controller class would do with their encounter power(s). But in this manner, the Psion is allowed to make one of the at-wills their "encounter-like" power in this battle, and another one in the next.
The fact that they don't gain an encounter power still bugs me, though, so I propose that the Psion gets this Power available at the appropriate levels:
Psionic Augmentation I
You augment your psionic powers from a well of extra will.
Encounter Psionic
Free Action Personal
Effect: Until the end of the encounter, you can spend power points on any Power with the Augmentable keyword.
This encounter Power could also be the source of the power points themselves, instead of the separate table in the article.
The Psion of 3rd edition had six Disciplines, each associated with one of the six ability scores. The article has developer commentary throughout it, and they mention that to start they focussed on the two "iconic" builds, telepathy (based on Intelligence in 3.5) and psychokinesis (base on Constitution). Since my dwarf Psion was a Savant (the psychokinesis discipline), I was excited to see that that was going to be available -- but then disappointed when this article stopped after introducing the telepath. HOW long do I have to wait?
The article also, unfortunately, saves space by listing many of the Powers, but not their descriptions, instead providing links to the Compendium. This technically isn't a problem for anyone who's reading it, since they have access to the Compendium as well, but it's awkward to have to go to each power separately to read about them, instead of just reading a handful of pages that lay them all out. Additionally (and this might just be a setting in my Reader), clicking on the links uses the same tab in which I'm reading the PDF, instead of popping up a new one. A bit of a pain, that.
The powers that I did read, though, seem not to have much focus. They mainly deal damage, but some affect in other ways (daze, stun), some do ongoing damage, some weaken defenses... on the one hand, having such a wide range of effects can be handy, true, but it doesn't allow for making a character with a theme.
In fact, the whole feel of the Psion, as I can see with this partial view, is that it's meant to be used for a hybrid character. It feels like it would go well with a Fighter, Rogue or Warlord, adding some Controller to those other roles. Perhaps once the full class is finally released that view might change, but for now, there's just ... something ... that seems to be missing to make it a complete class on its own.
Maybe I can convince Griff to playtest it...
Right off the bat, I was wrong about where the Psion was going to place in the scheme of things. And, right off the bat, I got my back up when I read that the Psion has no encounter attack powers.
Until now, all classes have followed a very regular formula of what they get at each level - at-will here, daily there, new one here, new one there. So when I read that the Psion wasn't taking part in this, I immediately saw 4e going the way of 3.5, with level advancement charts for every class looking wildly different. Instead of the encounter power, the Psion gets power points, reminiscent of the points used in 3.5. These points are used to augment the at-will powers that the Psion has, basically letting him or her turn the at-wills into a pseudo-encounter power, in terms of strength and effect.
This is actually quite interesting, giving the Psion quite a bit of flexibility. The article says that, overall, the resulting effect is that the Psion is going to do as much damage as any other Controller class would do with their encounter power(s). But in this manner, the Psion is allowed to make one of the at-wills their "encounter-like" power in this battle, and another one in the next.
The fact that they don't gain an encounter power still bugs me, though, so I propose that the Psion gets this Power available at the appropriate levels:
Psionic Augmentation I
You augment your psionic powers from a well of extra will.
Encounter Psionic
Free Action Personal
Effect: Until the end of the encounter, you can spend power points on any Power with the Augmentable keyword.
This encounter Power could also be the source of the power points themselves, instead of the separate table in the article.
The Psion of 3rd edition had six Disciplines, each associated with one of the six ability scores. The article has developer commentary throughout it, and they mention that to start they focussed on the two "iconic" builds, telepathy (based on Intelligence in 3.5) and psychokinesis (base on Constitution). Since my dwarf Psion was a Savant (the psychokinesis discipline), I was excited to see that that was going to be available -- but then disappointed when this article stopped after introducing the telepath. HOW long do I have to wait?
The article also, unfortunately, saves space by listing many of the Powers, but not their descriptions, instead providing links to the Compendium. This technically isn't a problem for anyone who's reading it, since they have access to the Compendium as well, but it's awkward to have to go to each power separately to read about them, instead of just reading a handful of pages that lay them all out. Additionally (and this might just be a setting in my Reader), clicking on the links uses the same tab in which I'm reading the PDF, instead of popping up a new one. A bit of a pain, that.
The powers that I did read, though, seem not to have much focus. They mainly deal damage, but some affect in other ways (daze, stun), some do ongoing damage, some weaken defenses... on the one hand, having such a wide range of effects can be handy, true, but it doesn't allow for making a character with a theme.
In fact, the whole feel of the Psion, as I can see with this partial view, is that it's meant to be used for a hybrid character. It feels like it would go well with a Fighter, Rogue or Warlord, adding some Controller to those other roles. Perhaps once the full class is finally released that view might change, but for now, there's just ... something ... that seems to be missing to make it a complete class on its own.
Maybe I can convince Griff to playtest it...
Thursday, May 21, 2009
The Monk who finally found true love
For a variety of reasons we haven't played our beloved game for several weeks now, so I've yet to try out my hybrid character.
However, I did get a look at the playtest for the Monk class (thanks to Crwth, as usual). Here are my usual half-assed opinions.
First off, the Monk is now Psionic. My initial reaction to that was... well, I was disgusted. I've always hated psionics going all the way back to AD&D. No good reason for that. I think that my problem with psionics started with it not feeling "in place" with the whole swords and magic theme. Anyways, I was young and it's a bias that has irrationally stayed with me ever since.
However, I quickly reminded myself of that and of the fact that it's just a word. With that in mind I was able to get past my hang up and approached it with an open mind (as open as my mind ever gets anyways).
Then, a funny thing happened. I realized that the Psionic power source is a perfect fit for the Monk. In fact, it totally changed a class that never seemed to find the right niche.
With Psionics however, the monk is suddenly associated with it's famous mental fortitude and discipline in a concrete way. What was once just a bit of flavor for RP purposes is now a central theme of the class. It simply works.
Emboldened by that shattered paradigm I continued reading. Much like every class in 4E the monk has some interesting powers, some that are only so-so and formulaic. The new twist of a "Full Discipline" is interesting. Sorta reminiscent of the old "full round action". I like it in that it really makes it easy to visualize the fluidity of the Monk in battle.
My only real complaint is in the weapon proficiencies. I'd like to see more for the monk, just because the real world inspiration (or the one that I visualize when I think "monk") could pick up anything nearby and turn it into a weapon. While I don't think farm implements need to be listed in a PHB, I'm hopeful that the traditional kama, sai, and whatnot find their way into the game as Monk implements. Frankly I'd be surprised if they didn't but for now it is an issue.
All in all, they've done a great job with the 4E monk. Should my current character die, or choose to "retire", I'm thinking my next character will be a monk. Perhaps if the playtesting is done and the PHB3 is out, I might get to try the hybrid monk/sorcerer I've been dreaming of since FR loosened the monk multi-classing restrictions. Now that's something to look forward to.
However, I did get a look at the playtest for the Monk class (thanks to Crwth, as usual). Here are my usual half-assed opinions.
First off, the Monk is now Psionic. My initial reaction to that was... well, I was disgusted. I've always hated psionics going all the way back to AD&D. No good reason for that. I think that my problem with psionics started with it not feeling "in place" with the whole swords and magic theme. Anyways, I was young and it's a bias that has irrationally stayed with me ever since.
However, I quickly reminded myself of that and of the fact that it's just a word. With that in mind I was able to get past my hang up and approached it with an open mind (as open as my mind ever gets anyways).
Then, a funny thing happened. I realized that the Psionic power source is a perfect fit for the Monk. In fact, it totally changed a class that never seemed to find the right niche.
With Psionics however, the monk is suddenly associated with it's famous mental fortitude and discipline in a concrete way. What was once just a bit of flavor for RP purposes is now a central theme of the class. It simply works.
Emboldened by that shattered paradigm I continued reading. Much like every class in 4E the monk has some interesting powers, some that are only so-so and formulaic. The new twist of a "Full Discipline" is interesting. Sorta reminiscent of the old "full round action". I like it in that it really makes it easy to visualize the fluidity of the Monk in battle.
My only real complaint is in the weapon proficiencies. I'd like to see more for the monk, just because the real world inspiration (or the one that I visualize when I think "monk") could pick up anything nearby and turn it into a weapon. While I don't think farm implements need to be listed in a PHB, I'm hopeful that the traditional kama, sai, and whatnot find their way into the game as Monk implements. Frankly I'd be surprised if they didn't but for now it is an issue.
All in all, they've done a great job with the 4E monk. Should my current character die, or choose to "retire", I'm thinking my next character will be a monk. Perhaps if the playtesting is done and the PHB3 is out, I might get to try the hybrid monk/sorcerer I've been dreaming of since FR loosened the monk multi-classing restrictions. Now that's something to look forward to.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Future classes
I just started reading the article on the Warden class, which, as when new classes are introduced, had me thinking about my post here on the role/power-source pairings.
Since that post, Griff and I mulled around the ideas of classes that would pair up the future power sources, the ones that didn't make it into the Player's Handbook but had been mentioned there or elsewhere, such as Primal, Psychic, Ki and Shadow. We took our inspiration from the splat books of 3rd edition, trying to decide what existing classes would fit which roles.
The resulting table is too big for the blog's format, but you can see a live version (which might not match what I'm saying here, if you are looking at it in the future), here. The bold class names are ones that have been defined in rulebooks or other articles; the italicized entries are ones that were our guesses. For the Arcane Defender we had the Spellsword from Tome and Battle; and the Barbarian we had put into Primal Defender, not because we thought it fit perfectly, but because we wanted to place Barbarian somewhere, and had already put a Striker in (forgetting, of course, that we have two Martial Strikers from the get-go.)
Got any guesses for this chart?
Back to the Warden class. Right off the bat, I like the class features; they're nicely in line with the Defender concept and the title of "Warden", finding resistances and defenses where others do not.
The "marking" idea of 4e is one that I haven't fully evaluated. It gets used during our campaigns, but I think we've still got some time before we really see it shine. I like the concept, but it's contrary to the "not having to keep track of things" mentality of 4e -- luckily my players are good at reminding me when they've marked something (just as I'm saying that the target is attacking someone else). The Warden, rightly, gets powers based on marking, which helps cement that Defender role by drawing the enemy to her (or at least penalizing them if they don't).
Lots of the Warden powers deal with movement: pushing/pulling, slowing, sliding, shifting. Again, that works well with the Defender idea -- if the enemy can't move, they can't get to the rest of your party.
And of course, they have the requisite bit of polymorphing in there. In 3.5, I was strongly drawn to the Druid, and the Shifter, and the Verdant Lord... everything that the Primal power source is going to encompass (not counting the Barbarian). Right now, I think that the Warden would have my vote if I was to play a Defender role.
Until we get psionics, right Griff?
Since that post, Griff and I mulled around the ideas of classes that would pair up the future power sources, the ones that didn't make it into the Player's Handbook but had been mentioned there or elsewhere, such as Primal, Psychic, Ki and Shadow. We took our inspiration from the splat books of 3rd edition, trying to decide what existing classes would fit which roles.
The resulting table is too big for the blog's format, but you can see a live version (which might not match what I'm saying here, if you are looking at it in the future), here. The bold class names are ones that have been defined in rulebooks or other articles; the italicized entries are ones that were our guesses. For the Arcane Defender we had the Spellsword from Tome and Battle; and the Barbarian we had put into Primal Defender, not because we thought it fit perfectly, but because we wanted to place Barbarian somewhere, and had already put a Striker in (forgetting, of course, that we have two Martial Strikers from the get-go.)
Got any guesses for this chart?
Back to the Warden class. Right off the bat, I like the class features; they're nicely in line with the Defender concept and the title of "Warden", finding resistances and defenses where others do not.
The "marking" idea of 4e is one that I haven't fully evaluated. It gets used during our campaigns, but I think we've still got some time before we really see it shine. I like the concept, but it's contrary to the "not having to keep track of things" mentality of 4e -- luckily my players are good at reminding me when they've marked something (just as I'm saying that the target is attacking someone else). The Warden, rightly, gets powers based on marking, which helps cement that Defender role by drawing the enemy to her (or at least penalizing them if they don't).
Lots of the Warden powers deal with movement: pushing/pulling, slowing, sliding, shifting. Again, that works well with the Defender idea -- if the enemy can't move, they can't get to the rest of your party.
And of course, they have the requisite bit of polymorphing in there. In 3.5, I was strongly drawn to the Druid, and the Shifter, and the Verdant Lord... everything that the Primal power source is going to encompass (not counting the Barbarian). Right now, I think that the Warden would have my vote if I was to play a Defender role.
Until we get psionics, right Griff?
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