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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Defining Roles

(This is a reprint.  This post was originally published on July 30, 2008.  I’ll be touching on the subject again — and on how it’s changed thanks to the new books that have come out since I first wrote this — in the near future.)

Over at All Your Dungeons Are Belonging to Us!!, Donny raises an interesting point regarding the difference between third and fourth edition D&D.  In a nutshell, he feels that character roles, for the sake of game balance, are enforced more strictly in 4e than they were in 3e, and his opinion is that this is a bad thing.  It’s the following passage that inspired this post, though:

I do not like being TOLD how my character SHOULD be played. It’s just like that. The great peoples (no sarcasm) over at Wizards have taken this edition WAY too far down the path of one-size-fits-all. The “tyranny of fun” argument was misplaced with the stupid cave slime example, THIS is where it lives. It is right at the heart of the system, not in some silly little table, buried in the middle of a book. Want to play a ranger? Good, you’re the striker. Just. Like. That. Even worse, where’s the customization? Everything that has been set aside for you in terms of powers are designed specifically to reinforce that role. Even within it’s own framework this has problems. You cannot fill any other role.

This is not entirely true, in my limited experience with 4e.  But it is largely true, especially of the ranger.  Most classes can, with some work, fulfill a secondary role — the fighter can put out damage almost as well as a striker, the paladin has some healing and buffing abilities like a leader, the warlock and the cleric bring some control to the table, and even the rogue can do a lot of sliding and pushing and knocking the enemy prone if he builds for it.  The ranger, though, is largely damage.  Future books might change that, as Donny notes later, but the core ranger is a striker.

Is this a problem?

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Zero Level, Revisited

A little over a month ago, I proposed a “Zero Level” for 4e for those who would enjoy using the fourth-edition rules yet starting the game at a lower power level.  4e is a minor paradigm shift in that even first-level characters are heroes — it’s the name of the tier.  If a character wasn’t to be a hero, then, he must be somewhere prior to the heroic tier.  Borrowing the zero-level idea from a few editions back and tweaking it to 4e seemed to make sense.

I’m pretty happy with the general idea, but the zero-level I came up with wasn’t quite what I’d wanted.  There was still a pretty stark jump in power level, as several people noted, particularly in the “half hp” to full-first-level-hp switch.  I tried to smooth the progression out a bit, while keeping in mind what the system was representing:  growth of a character from a relatively-normal person (though one with great potential) to a full-fledged hero.  I came to the conclusion that several different points in that continuum needed to be represented in order to fully achieve what I’d pictured.  A pre-heroic tier, if you will, though a very short one.

Initiate

The initiate character is a trained member of his class, but he isn’t yet a hero.  This might be the fighter during his mercenary days, or the wizard after completing his apprenticeship but before embarking on studies of his own, or the paladin newly knighted and not yet tested.  He’s still quite competent in his field, but he lacks the lessons of personal experience that make a first-level fighter, wizard, or paladin what they are.  This level is very similar to my earlier proposal; generation follows the same basic pattern:

1. Choose Race. No changes.
2. Choose Class. Choose a class as usual; however, you lack one of the class features of the class you choose.  See below.  Additionally, you have 2 fewer healing surges.
3. Determine Ability Scores. No changes.
4. Choose Skills. You know one fewer skill.  For example, a cleric knows Religion plus two (rather than three) skills from the list of available class skills.
5. Select Feats. You do not select a feat.
6. Choose Powers. You select at-will powers normally.  You may select an encounter power, but you may only use that power once per day until you reach level 1.  You do not select a daily power.
7. Choose Equipment. The GM may choose to restrict beginning equipment options.
8. Fill in the Numbers. As below.

Your hit points are equal to those of a first-level character minus the amount you would normally gain each level.  For instance, a paladin with 10 Constitution would normally have 25 hit points at first level, and gain 6 for each level thereafter.  Therefore, an Initiate Paladin with 10 Constitution has 25 – 6 = 19 hp.  At first level, he gains 6 hp, bringing him to the normal total of 25.

Your bonuses are affected by your status.  Treat “half your level” as “-1.”

You are “missing” one class feature.  It is up to the player and GM to agree on which one, but it’s best to try to ensure that the character will be able to perform the basic functions of his role.  For instance, a cleric should probably not “lose” Healing Word.  The GM may wish to restrict Ritual Casting at this level, since you’re technically not level 1 yet.  If he does, this does not count as the class feature you “lose” — you must still choose a different class feature to “give up.”

You must gain 500 xp to become a first-level character.  At that time, you gain your “missing” class feature and all of the other benefits of being a first-level hero (extra hp and healing surges, a feat, the “missing” skill, etc.)  You may also retrain when gaining first level, as you normally would when gaining a level.

Novice

The novice is the fledgling adventurer, possessed of the rudiments of training in his class but lacking the sheer skill or power that even a first-level hero wields casually.  There is still some quality that sets him apart — he learns quickly, perhaps, or has a great degree of natural talent — but he has yet to refine his abilities.  This is the wizard as an apprentice or the knight as a squire.

A novice character is created in a similar manner, but the restrictions are even harsher.  A novice has only one class feature — a defining one, as agreed upon by the player and the GM.  (Classes with particularly weak features that are nevertheless central to their concept may have two, if the GM permits.  For instance, the Bard should probably have Skill Versatility in addition to another feature.)

A novice also has two fewer healing surges than an initiate (four fewer than a first-level character), and “loses” another level’s worth of hit points.  The 10-Con Paladin above would possess 25 – 6 – 6 = 13 hp as a Novice Paladin.  A Novice Wizard with 8 Constitution would possess 10 hit points (18 – 4 – 4 ).  Clearly, novice characters are extremely fragile and will have to be very careful about adventuring.  If you use a character-creation method that would allow a lower Constitution score, then 1 hit point is a minimum.

A novice character has one at-will power — he’s mastered one basic trick of his profession.  He also knows one encounter power, but he may only use it once per day, and only after spending an action point during the encounter; he is pushing himself to his limits in order to pull off an advanced technique that he hasn’t quite mastered yet.  At the GM’s option, the character may use this power without spending an action point, but with the addition of some adverse or unforeseen side effect.

As a novice character, you treat “half your level” as -”2.”

The GM may wish to remove an additional trained skill from a novice character, but I don’t recommend it; they’re pretty limited already.

You must gain 250 xp to become an initiate character.  At that time, you gain all of the benefits of an initiate character, and you may retrain.