Deep Psi

Side note first:  I fixed a problem that might have been keeping comments from working correctly, so if you’ve tried to leave one lately and failed, you should be able to now.

On to the main post.  Recently, I decided I’d try a subscription to Insider.  Although I didn’t see a lot of purpose to it when I first got the core books, and I’m not terribly moved by promises of exclusive content, I figured it would be worth a try, and if nothing else there might be some interesting stuff in Dungeon that I could lift for my game.  Plus, I’d get access to stuff like the Swordmage, a class printed in a book I have no intention of ever buying.  And the Monk, in which I have something of an interest, if you hadn’t noticed…

I haven’t played around with Insider enough to really comment on it yet.  I can say that I find the character builder fun to tinker with, and probably pretty useful (although I’ve never had problems with creating characters in 4e using pen and paper, either).  Dungeon and Dragon look promising enough that the subscription might be justified, although the Dungeon content looks a little lighter than I’d like.

But the main thing that’s caught my attention is the Psion class, recently revealed.

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4e Mystic project

Well, not really.  I’ve decided to rename my take on the Monk class “Mystic Monk” in homage to the Cyclopedia’s Mystic class, in order to differentiate it from Wizards’ in-playtest monk class.  I made a few more changes, including one to an epic destiny feature I hadn’t previously noticed was broken (even for a level 30 ability).  I think it’s more or less in its final form now.  The one major thing I might change is the power source:  currently it’s still using Ki, which is deprecated.  Aside from that, I foresee no more than a few small tweaks as further play catches minor problems I’d previously missed.

There are design decisions I would make differently if I’d known when I started the project what I now know about the game.  I think the process has helped me get a better grasp of the way 4e classes work, though.  If I ever get the urge to write up another class, I’ll be able to apply what I’ve learned here.  And I’ll know what I’m getting into — 30 levels of powers is no easy task, I can tell you.

I think, in general, it might be a better idea to expand the system by homebrewing new class builds, rather than new classes entirely.  Sometimes, though, the existing classes just don’t come close to what you want, and that was the case for the monk when I began this project.  In the end, I guess it turned out pretty well.  It’s a straightforward class, but it seems to do what I meant it to, and it seems to be roughly balanced against other classes.

Wizards’ Monk Playtest

Although I’m not a D&D Insider subscriber, I got a look at the playtest version of the 4e monk — a class that is dear to my heart.  I’d speculated previously that the PHB3 classes would be more complex than their earlier counterparts, and the playtest document seems to confirm that, to an extent.  At least, this particular class seems fairly complex.

What I didn’t expect:  The monk is a Psionic striker.  Evidently the designers felt that the Ki power source was too limited, and have more or less stricken it from development.  Psionics, as a power source arising from inside, was the next-best fit.  Although it caught me off guard, it makes sense — although I’m sure the “use the Force” jokes at the table will proliferate.  But I can live with that.

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The Rules Gap

In my experience, people who play D&D — and roleplaying games in general — have two ways of looking at the rules.

Some try to make their games fit the rules.

Others try to make the rules fit their games.

Tales of the Rambling Bumblers touched on this in an excellent post about two months ago, but it comes to mind now because of what I wrote about in my previous post, and because of several unrelated recent conversations I’ve had with other gamers and bloggers.  My take on it is slightly different from Joshua’s; for one thing, I’m coming at it from the player perspective instead of the system perspective.

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Developing Roles

Last July, I originally published a piece about how classes in fourth edition D&D now serve to define a role, a set of abilities, rather than a specific archetype including flavor text.  In other words, how the Ranger, the class, is not necessarily the ranger, the guy who runs around in the woods making friends with animals and shooting orcs — and vice versa.

In my review of the Player’s Handbook 2, I mentioned some thoughts about where that book was taking the game.  Now I’m finally getting around to digging into that.

Like any edition, 4e has changed as new books are published to support it.  New classes, new races, new powers, new feats, new items — new everything has appeared.  In some ways, the game is much the same.  The system is robust in its exception-based design — and, even more so, because it divorces the mechanics from the special effects, the “fluff.”  It remains an extremely adaptable game, although the system itself almost seems to hide this fact.  The ease of refluffing is one of 4e’s greatest strengths, but, even with the permission granted in the Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide, many players and GMs seem reluctant to do so.

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