Arcane Power: A welcome boost or necessary evil?

By now it should come as no surprise that I'm not exactly a fan of 4E. I'm sure I've beaten the no-multiclassing-spellcasters-suck-now horse well past the point of death. However, there are some signs that 4E might someday mature into a good all around game.

The hybrid rules are a step in the right direction. The whole emphasis on a character's "Role" in the party is still overly invasive, restrictive, and utterly annoying but at least there's some room for creative class mixing.

The new monk not only solidifies a class that always felt "tacked on" but also validates psionics, which were just shit from the get go. While the final product of the monk and psionics is yet to be seen, it sure looks promising.

Really, the only remaining disappointment I have is with the spellcasters. Namely the Arcane ones. The ones that were my favorites in 3rd edition but now feel and play exactly like any other class.

I'm sure that the Wizards, Sorcerers, Warlocks et al get access to some pretty sweet powers eventually. I've seen a few that I'm actually looking forward to having but it all rings hollow when I look at the powers the fighter side of my hybrid will get. They have the same level of niftiness with the added bonus of being right up in the thick of the action. Martial characters get to have their cake and eat it too.

Which brings me to the new "Arcane Powers" supplement. It's name alone gives me hope. After all, I really liked the majority of the content in the "Martial Powers" book, so I'm hoping the Arcane version will be filled with similar yumminess.

I read somewhere (sorry for the lack of linkage, I wanna say that it was somewhere on dungeonmastering.com but I'm not sure and I'm too lazy to go searching) that the Familiar is finally joining the party, and that they have a passive and active mode. That's all well and good. I've never been a big fan of the familiar, simply because I don't like the extra bookkeeping and logistics of having one. If they've dumbed the familiar down to the point of being a magic item that perches on one's shoulder, that's fine by me.

I also saw something on a storm theme which is enticing. Not only is the sorcerer my favorite 3rd edition class, the addition of the storm theme would make it a good fit for my current hybrid fighter/wizard. I might need to do yet another character re-build. Or, perhaps not, since class is almost meaningless in 4E (but that's another post entirely).

I'm sure the wizard, warlock, and bard all gain some new tricks as well. The wizard section(s) will be of particular interest to me, and the warlock might be a good or interesting read, but I still say that the warlock and sorcerer are redundant. While one uses pacts and the other has a chaotic slant, in the end both are arcane strikers. Do we really need two of those? As for the bard, well, who really cares about bards?

While I'm loathe to drop any more cash on an edition that I'm not entirely sold on (yet) when we have a very fun edition to fall back upon, I'll probably break down and buy Arcane Power when I get the chance. I just hope that it finally gives the spellcasters a reason to be.

What manner of sorcery is this?

Thanks to Crwth I got a look at the Sorcerer class coming in the PHB2. It’s a class that’s been near and dear to me since the early days of 3rd Edition for a variety of reasons.

For starters I’ve always liked the Charismatic hero. More importantly I love the open ended spell selection that allowed (encouraged) a customized theme and spared me the tedious book keeping of the Wizard. Plus there was the challenge of picking those spells knowing that they’d be locked in (at least until WotC introduced the swap rule). Whether it was my Graz’zt worshipping thrall or my greatsword wielding dwarf I loved mixing the sorcerer class in new and weird ways.

So it was that when the 4E PHB was released my biggest initial disappointment was in the omission of the sorcerer class. The fact that the Warlock was there taking up the pages that rightfully belonged to my Sorcerer was just a kick in the junk. But I more or less shrugged it off and settled for a Wizard.

In the early days I was pleasantly surprised by the Wizard. The powers reduced the book keeping so it wasn’t all that bad. In fact I was starting to think that the 4E Wizard was just a Sorcerer by another name. Of course it didn’t take me long to realize that thanks to the powers every class is another class by another name.

Anyways, the preview of the 4E Sorcerer looks promising. But, that said, I'm not sure why they plugged the Sorcerer into the Arcane Striker role. First the Warlock steals the Sorcerer's pages in the PHB, and now the Sorcerer has to share a role with the upstart? Especially when the Elemental source seemed like such a natural fit. So, WTF?

As an aside, am I the only one feeling like WotC has us on a cycle of “hey, this is new and cool” to “blah blah blah” to “yay another power source book” to “blah”?

The “Spell Source” is interesting. The Dragon Magic source is reminiscent of the 3.5 version of the Sorcerer, with it’s Draconic blood in the veins thing. The details are more of the usual bonus to this, gain this when bloodied, schlock that I’ve seen everywhere before.

However the Wild Magic is refreshingly novel. The Chaos Burst is fun in that it gives you a round to round benefit depending on what you roll to attack. Then again, I thought we weren’t going to have to keep track of that sort of thing anymore. And what happens in a round where I don’t roll an attack?

The Unfettered Power is another perk to Wild Magic and this one is without flaw. The natural 20 result is all well and good, but I’m practically giddy with the result of a natural 1. Pushing every creature (enemy or ally) within twenty five feet is hilarious. I can foresee times where I’ll actually want to roll a 1.

The rest of the article is the usual drivel of powers ad nauseum. Some interesting stuff but nothing that stands out as truly unique or class defining.

All in all, I’ve actually got a little something to look forward to.

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.

Warlord. Why play anything else?

This has been bothering me for a while now.

Every playtest we see has a Warlord and a Warlock in it.

Okay, this is playtesting and these are new classes (although the Warlock has been around for a while in 3.5) so obviously they need to playtest them a lot.

I get that. Still, the more I read the more it seems that the Warlord in particular is getting a lot of love. So much love that I'm wondering if it will beat out the cleric as the class every party has to have.

I mean, the Warlord boosts fighters. It gives casters extra uses of their spells. It slices. It dices. It never rusts and is guaranteed for as long as you avoid a TPK.

It certainly sounds pretty good on a 3:00 a.m. info-mercial, but will that be the case when it arrives in 6-8 weeks (or June 2008)? Well, that remains to be seen.

Teh warlock is teh suxx!

When the warlock first appeared as a class I barely noticed. As a dedicated player of spellcasters it caught my eye but only as a novel new twist. I didn't even give it much of a read as I was much more interested in Pact Magic and Dragon Magic which Crwth had also added to the library around that time.

So for a long time the Warlock simply flew below my radar.

Recently however, I returned to gaming at the play-by-post boards over at WotC (Real_Adventures if you're curious). As such I'm seeing a lot of warlocks being put forth as player characters. That and the fact that every playtest party seems to have at least one warlock (usually a tielfing I might add). So, okay, the class has my grudging attention now.

If for not other reason than the possibility that the warlock is as preview of the magic system we might see in 4e. The invocations thing, the uses per day thing, the whole 90 degree departure from the spellcasting system used for sorcerors and wizards.

All in all, I think that the warlock is a viable and interesting class, for 3.5 edition.

I say again... for 3.5.

What I don't see is how it'll fit in 4th edition. If the 4e magic system is more or less like the current warlock, then the one thing that seperates it from the sorcerer is suddenly gone. The warlock becomes a sorcerer with a darker background. A Goth version and nothing more.

It seems to me that the warlock could be better used if rolled into the sorcerer. Give sorcerers the option of the traditional draconic heritage, or a warlocky devilish background.

Better yet, make it a middle ground between the sorcerer and druid. The DMG has the witch (aka warlock) as an example of how to make your own prestige class (can't recall the page but it's at the start of the PrC chapter). That's the warlock I think of. That's the kind of class I can picture in 4e. Save the heavy eyeliner, black lipstick, and white face paint for some other game.