Post by Beowuuf on Dec 11, 2009 16:27:38 GMT -5
This came up recently, and I had mentioned it in the past, the idea of seeing if the old d20 LWRPG would convert to 4th edition.
Taking the Kai as the basic class to translate, some of the issues of this is as follows:
4th edition quirks:
-The power progression now split powers into at-will, encounter and daily powers, with feats and 'utility' powers aswell.
-characters are generated to hit the ground running - they have a spread of powers (a daily, encounter and a few at wills and a feat) at first level, and then slowly build more with each level granting on at one of those power levels.
-A character's level determines their skills more than anything, and skill allotment is no longer as granular, consitiing of 'trained/untrained' choices at first level that give a +5 bonus.
Previous LWRPG quirks
-applying psionics as so widespread seemed to reveal how powerful that aspect was in D&D, and overpowered Kai Lords that way
- the ramping up of so many abilities with tiers of gains seemed to break the kai lords, even compared to the epic and powerful classes that populated the game
Some idea for translating Kai Lords:
- pitching the Kai Lord correctly. The Kai Lord is not a strong warrior. He is perhaps more akin to a warlord, or a paladin, or a ranger. Certainly he would be a leader or striker, never a controller nor able to be a defender (less armour/hp and healing surges than a tank I think, balanced by however healing could aid him later- probably making healing surges easier to use, or granting multiple surge use in a battle)
It seems that flexibility must be be the Kai Lord's greatest strength, and weakness. That he must never be as powerful as a dedicated class, but always have the flexibility to try and take on many tasks or engage an enemy in appropriate ways to keep them off balance.
Anyway, the way the transitions work in 4th ed seems to dictate a change of pace in levelling
The way the 4th edition expands the classes:
1st level: Feature(s), a feat (two for humans), 2 at wills (three for humans), an encounter, and a daily power. Paladins would have a few class features added in terms of channelling fivinity (no more until 11th level) and 3 skills they could train from a choice of five. Rogues have 'tacticals' features and sneak attack (that increases much slower, one increase each tier), and 4 skills to choose, out of eight. Warlords have some features to do with inspiration and affectng those around, and again 4 skills from six.
2nd: Feat, utility 2 power
3rd: Encounter 3 power
4th: Feat, ability score increase
5th: Daily 5 power
6th: Feat, ultility 6 power
7th: Encounter 7 power
8th: Feat, ability score increase
9th: Dailly 9 power
10th: Feat, utility 10 power
As human is by default the Kai Lord race, and as you can assume that Kai Lord training is all encompassing, perhaps the human bonuses can be ignored/amalgamated, allowing for more lee-way in assigning the kai lord bonuses and abilities.
One of the troubels seems to be the front loading of alot of abilities, and then giving a mix of different levels of unrelated powers going onwards.
So therefore, a generic set of non-discipline abilities at first level would seem to be required that flavour the kai to make him stand out as the commanding prescene or the flexibile fighter he should be.
Certainly, the divine nature to his abilities would allow paladin like features to colour those non-sicipline abilities (perhaps combining the flavour of the paladin's divine mmechanics with the general leader aspect of the warlord)
In dealing with the diciplines and skills themselves, I would suggest the following:
The Kai Lord chooses a 'discipline', which is no more than a name for the pool of abilities that count as feats, encounter powers and dailies, all themed to that disicpline. The player must choose a power from a new discipline pool (and obviously only chooses one power from each pool).
However, each time a player chooses a greater power instead of a feat (eg an encounter power or a daily power) they have the choice to either jump straight to a powerful version of a new discipline power, OR they can choose a lesser version the new dicipline power, and swap out the old discipline lesser powers for a more powerful version. Whew, that sentence makes no sense...
What I mean is, when choosing a new encounter power at third level, if they had healing (encounter from 1st) and hunting (feat from 2nd), the player chooses the Mindblast pool. They can either take one of the mindblast encounter powers, OR take a mindblast feat power, and swap out the hunting feat into a hunting encounter power.
Similarly, at 5th level, the daily power could be chosen directly, or again the trading could happen to make the new dicipline power only a feat or encounter, meanwhile swapping out other powers to higher grades and making one of the old powers a daily power.
I think the utility powers should reflect the Kai Lord's flexibility to defend themselves, and also perhaps be able to influence skill use.
Certainly, it would be good to show the kai lord's jack-of-all-trades nature, but the skill system as it stands dictates taking skills at first level then being stuck with them (from what I've seen).
While that core skill choice should not be broken (even allowing the kai lord to only have the lower bound of skill training), perhaps the range of skill choice should be increased to up to ten skills the disciplines represent. In that way, the Kai Lord has a flexible start. The utility powers may then have effects that would play on that - perhaps a (daily) utility that allows the kai lord to act as if trained in one skill that he has the 'dicipline' for. Therefore, the kai lord can perhaps slowly build up skill training to four or five in par with what certain human classs would have by master level, while at the same time having the quirk of being the jack of many trades in a pinch.
To deal with psionics, I think it has to be completely ignored as anything other than an at-will charisma based attack that targets will. Perhaps allowing in their encounter/daily forms the ability to attack in an ongoing manner (save ends) or allow basic attacks to spring from successful psychic hits (seems too much rolling in combat though) This way, the psychic combat aspects are closer to the gamebook where strong-willed characters can be immune to the effects even if not truly psychic, and also the fact that these abilities usually only gave a bonus not automatic success to combat.
Anyway, that is some of the rambling thoughts I've had, and should hopefully show why I never got around to the 4th edition ideas for a LW game, even when I got actually got the chance to read up on the 4th ed players classes!
Edit: Why did I mention rogues not rangers? I don't know!
Taking the Kai as the basic class to translate, some of the issues of this is as follows:
4th edition quirks:
-The power progression now split powers into at-will, encounter and daily powers, with feats and 'utility' powers aswell.
-characters are generated to hit the ground running - they have a spread of powers (a daily, encounter and a few at wills and a feat) at first level, and then slowly build more with each level granting on at one of those power levels.
-A character's level determines their skills more than anything, and skill allotment is no longer as granular, consitiing of 'trained/untrained' choices at first level that give a +5 bonus.
Previous LWRPG quirks
-applying psionics as so widespread seemed to reveal how powerful that aspect was in D&D, and overpowered Kai Lords that way
- the ramping up of so many abilities with tiers of gains seemed to break the kai lords, even compared to the epic and powerful classes that populated the game
Some idea for translating Kai Lords:
- pitching the Kai Lord correctly. The Kai Lord is not a strong warrior. He is perhaps more akin to a warlord, or a paladin, or a ranger. Certainly he would be a leader or striker, never a controller nor able to be a defender (less armour/hp and healing surges than a tank I think, balanced by however healing could aid him later- probably making healing surges easier to use, or granting multiple surge use in a battle)
It seems that flexibility must be be the Kai Lord's greatest strength, and weakness. That he must never be as powerful as a dedicated class, but always have the flexibility to try and take on many tasks or engage an enemy in appropriate ways to keep them off balance.
Anyway, the way the transitions work in 4th ed seems to dictate a change of pace in levelling
The way the 4th edition expands the classes:
1st level: Feature(s), a feat (two for humans), 2 at wills (three for humans), an encounter, and a daily power. Paladins would have a few class features added in terms of channelling fivinity (no more until 11th level) and 3 skills they could train from a choice of five. Rogues have 'tacticals' features and sneak attack (that increases much slower, one increase each tier), and 4 skills to choose, out of eight. Warlords have some features to do with inspiration and affectng those around, and again 4 skills from six.
2nd: Feat, utility 2 power
3rd: Encounter 3 power
4th: Feat, ability score increase
5th: Daily 5 power
6th: Feat, ultility 6 power
7th: Encounter 7 power
8th: Feat, ability score increase
9th: Dailly 9 power
10th: Feat, utility 10 power
As human is by default the Kai Lord race, and as you can assume that Kai Lord training is all encompassing, perhaps the human bonuses can be ignored/amalgamated, allowing for more lee-way in assigning the kai lord bonuses and abilities.
One of the troubels seems to be the front loading of alot of abilities, and then giving a mix of different levels of unrelated powers going onwards.
So therefore, a generic set of non-discipline abilities at first level would seem to be required that flavour the kai to make him stand out as the commanding prescene or the flexibile fighter he should be.
Certainly, the divine nature to his abilities would allow paladin like features to colour those non-sicipline abilities (perhaps combining the flavour of the paladin's divine mmechanics with the general leader aspect of the warlord)
In dealing with the diciplines and skills themselves, I would suggest the following:
The Kai Lord chooses a 'discipline', which is no more than a name for the pool of abilities that count as feats, encounter powers and dailies, all themed to that disicpline. The player must choose a power from a new discipline pool (and obviously only chooses one power from each pool).
However, each time a player chooses a greater power instead of a feat (eg an encounter power or a daily power) they have the choice to either jump straight to a powerful version of a new discipline power, OR they can choose a lesser version the new dicipline power, and swap out the old discipline lesser powers for a more powerful version. Whew, that sentence makes no sense...
What I mean is, when choosing a new encounter power at third level, if they had healing (encounter from 1st) and hunting (feat from 2nd), the player chooses the Mindblast pool. They can either take one of the mindblast encounter powers, OR take a mindblast feat power, and swap out the hunting feat into a hunting encounter power.
Similarly, at 5th level, the daily power could be chosen directly, or again the trading could happen to make the new dicipline power only a feat or encounter, meanwhile swapping out other powers to higher grades and making one of the old powers a daily power.
I think the utility powers should reflect the Kai Lord's flexibility to defend themselves, and also perhaps be able to influence skill use.
Certainly, it would be good to show the kai lord's jack-of-all-trades nature, but the skill system as it stands dictates taking skills at first level then being stuck with them (from what I've seen).
While that core skill choice should not be broken (even allowing the kai lord to only have the lower bound of skill training), perhaps the range of skill choice should be increased to up to ten skills the disciplines represent. In that way, the Kai Lord has a flexible start. The utility powers may then have effects that would play on that - perhaps a (daily) utility that allows the kai lord to act as if trained in one skill that he has the 'dicipline' for. Therefore, the kai lord can perhaps slowly build up skill training to four or five in par with what certain human classs would have by master level, while at the same time having the quirk of being the jack of many trades in a pinch.
To deal with psionics, I think it has to be completely ignored as anything other than an at-will charisma based attack that targets will. Perhaps allowing in their encounter/daily forms the ability to attack in an ongoing manner (save ends) or allow basic attacks to spring from successful psychic hits (seems too much rolling in combat though) This way, the psychic combat aspects are closer to the gamebook where strong-willed characters can be immune to the effects even if not truly psychic, and also the fact that these abilities usually only gave a bonus not automatic success to combat.
Anyway, that is some of the rambling thoughts I've had, and should hopefully show why I never got around to the 4th edition ideas for a LW game, even when I got actually got the chance to read up on the 4th ed players classes!
Edit: Why did I mention rogues not rangers? I don't know!