The LW Multiplayer Gamebook explained

[wildhare]

I agree with all your points and sure if you play him smart you can still have fun, I know I have. I was just pointing out that at first level at the cost of A Quarter of your life force, the equivalent of say getting shot in the leg or something, and woosh nothing happens, no rewards for your pain. It's very disapointing is all.

Don't get me wrong until the Lonewolf system came out I never enjoyed playing a mage all that much, I remember the old basic D&D game, one spell per day at first level, talk about useless. One fight, eight hours of resting to get it back, it would take three days to complete a three room dungeon.

On the fourth Edition front, I have had the pleasure of playing three times and DMing on another three occasions. And I must say this, I am in love with the combat system, it is actually fun to fight now. In the past my groups have always avoided combat, because it slows down the game too much (the average fight takes up about 1 hour of game time). They felt it interupted the flow too much and that climactic end of scenerio boss fight, always ended up feeling like a let down.

On the downside of 4th, a combat encounter can involve a lot of book keeping, if you thought d20 was too complicated then don't even think about trying 4th edition.
Personally I have been roleplaying for 22 years and have tried almost everygame on the planet and this one is worth the effort.
Its other downfall, converting the classes to your home made world is a lot of work, I spent two hours yesterday converting a BCS to 4th edition rules and only completed the 1st level spells list (at-wills, encounters, daily) I don't know what i'm going to do for higher levels their are only so many ways you can splice up a lightning attack. The good news though utility spells should be a breeze (levitation, silence, counterspell, sense evil, invisible shield).

Didn't someone on this forum already atempt this once before? hmm

[Beowuuf]

'Fraid not, I think I said it would be an idea to try and then realised how much work it was compared to the better fit of the d20 levelling up

I think the occult roll was a good compromise to the D&D system that allowed more uses of the BCS spells, but as you say 4th ed has blown out of the water alot of the D&D conventions like limited use of spellcasting at low level, and of course limited usefulness of fighters at higher level

[huntingmoon]

I think 4e would work ok, but you would need to change how you think about the Kai to make it work. Some of the Disciplies would work well as powers, like an encounter ability for Mind Blast that can be upgraded post level 10, but others would need to be adjusted into the fluff of the class like Weaponskill.

It could be interesting using the Weaponskill talent as a Ki focus....

The downside is such a conversion would be very long and drawn out.

On the otherhand, if it were patterned like the Psion class where your abilities are more effective the more "focus" you use it could be very doable. I sort of envison an Assassin/Psion hybrid myself.

[Beowuuf]

No sure, the two ways to do it would be to have a Psion like way, or to simply break the perceived kai working and have keywords, but keep to standard progressions, and have feats, encoutners and dailies modelled on discipline facets, and the at wills and utilities more generalised(to start with). In that case, I'd ahve the kai able to swap out more powers than other classes, so they can shuffle around each level the passive and 'active' disciplines in terms of at wills, encounters, feat etc that gets swapped around.

The other way could be to treat each discipline as an equivalent at will kai get, but that there is a 'channel divinity' clause that lets them boost the at will to an encounter power level, and some other names thing that allows a daily style augment

I'd go wit hthe first one to keep the Kai Lord close to other normal classes in mechanics, just to ensure balance. The Kai class should be the ok blanace gateway class to trying other classes I would have thought, not as the d20 had it a pretty powerful class that got tons of powers each ,evle above the other classes

[wildhare]

I truly believe that for the kai lord to work in 4th edition you have to abandon the idea of learning a new discipline every level. That or make them lore circle specific during the initial build but I would save those for the paragon paths at level 11 i.e. loremaster of fire, loremaster of spirit, etc...hmm ok that does it i'm stopping work on the Brotherhood of the crystal star class and going to attempt the kai lord.

[Beowuuf]

I posted the initial idea, I still say there should be some at wills and the utilities that are 'Kai' generas, and then maybe some at wills to swap to in the future like the mindblast, etc, but in general you either choose encounter or daily 'kai disciplines' or you pick a passive 'feat' discipline, then keep altering the build as your character progresses

[Black Cat]

A little update from the newest Planet Mongoose entry:

I am adding a couple of chapters to the new Lone Wolf Multiplayer Gamebook (we were going to leave the Magnakai for an 'advanced' supplement, but it makes more sense to make the Kai complete in the core book as we are going to be covering new classes later - even though high level Magnakai are _very_ powerful characters in this game)

[Beowuuf]

Cool! The high level magnakai characters should be able to beat challenges automatically that normal characters have to roll for, so I can see the magnakai would be at odds with anyhing detailed in the starting books!

[koreth]

I like simple. The existing RPG is pretty tough for me to get my mind around some of the numbers and rule variants. For my purposes, a simple system like in the gamebooks is ideal.

Can't wait.

Koreth

[Simey]

Agreed.

And the simpler the system, the simpler to tinker with it. Making a more or less powerful version of a monster should take about 30 seconds rather than spending a lot of time consulting conversion tables and such.

[greywolf]

In this case you just add/subtract from ENDURANCE and COMBAT SKILL, bingo, you have your variant.