The Specialties are listed as being Optional and have been described as a "Feat Delivery Method"
To my mind this makes Specialties sound like a pre-packaged list of feats that you can take for your character to speed character creation, as opposed to picking your feats one by one from a master list.
Picking Feats one by one however is probably still an option.
Consider what if the Fighter could take Initiated of the Faith (from the Acolyte Specialty) or Arcane Dabbler (from the magic user specialty) all on their own at 1st level and instead of following those specialties, just start on the Necromancer at 3rd.
Beat me to making a thread, and you also said most of the stuff that's got my tassels in a tizzel. Line that REALLY touched on how I feel: "I thought we were past this, WotC..."
Even worse than the necromancer thing IMO is the fact you have to be able to cast a Wizard spell to have a familiar. Really WotC? I specifically listed "anyone can have a familiar now" in the survey as the thing I loved MOST about the first playtest material. Because I saw that the wizard's familiar was part of his theme and assumed you weren't *&%$ing in my face when you said themes would be open to everyone.
I didn't MC into 5 different classes in 3.5 because I was a munchkin, I did it because I had to in order to get the kind of character I wanted. Am I going to have to do that here too? The fact that any class could have a familiar really looked like they were moving D&D in a direction that would allow me to have my character without that crap. It's what really gave me the impression that D&DN was going to be awesome and progressive. A lot of people have been saying "aw, this isn't moving anywhere, this is just a refresh of X earlier edition." I thought phooey on those people, but after seeing a pointless restriction like this come back they might not be as far off as I predicted.
tl;dr: How about you assume I can take care of my own fluff instead of needlessly locking down specialties and feats with pointless prerequisites? Yes, even if a previous feat in the specialty takes care of the prereq, even if it would be dumb for me to take it without said prereq, don't do it.
As for the mechanics of Aura of Souls, I'm honestly fine with it. Having a feat only be useful mechanically for certain builds is perfectly acceptable IMO. (Well, I do have miffs with the fluff of it, taking one's life force, and what that says about the meaning of "death" in D&D in general. But that's a different thread.) Just don't say I need to be a spell caster. Yes, I know it would be worthless on a fighter, let me worry about that.
Homebrew Psionics blog posts archive: Spoiler:Show
UPDATED Dec/18/2012: BAMN! Random update with a modest amount of hard rules for Animal Affinity, Telepathy, and Telekinesis. ADDED: Discipline Burn and more "soft" ideas. Dec/13/2012: Small Psionics Homebrew Update, now that I'm done with Finals.
Really old. Nov/02/2012: I'm working on a homebrew Wilder, and so a homebrew Psionics system. Here's a 3 part post with info on where I am in the design process. Part 1, Hard rules/example soulknife discipline: Link. Part 2, Basic ideas/goals on basic numbers and classes: Link. Part 3, Direction/ideas I want to take with specific disciplines: Link.
"Again, there's a difference to the level of evil inherent in animating a corpse vs. eating a soul. You can be creepy and still be a hero--you'd just be a creepy hero. You can't be a soul-eater and still be a hero. It's not the same."
+1
I also think there's a difference between sending a soul to the afterlife by draining a body's life-force/aura and destroying the soul.
The latter pretty much demands an evil character.
I take it none of you have seen the Soul Eater anime :P. Though to be fair, they only ate the souls of demons and witches.
Anywho, as far as the good vs evil implications, I can come up with soem justification for at least a Neutral or Chaotic Good character to use Necromancy.
Necromancy is a tool. Like any tool it's only as good or evil as the person using it(though a Neutral Good could have some reservation about raising innocents, so only raises the bodies of his enemies to fight for him).
Beat me to making a thread, and you also said most of the stuff that's got my tassels in a tizzel. Line that REALLY touched on how I feel: "I thought we were past this, WotC..."
Even worse than the necromancer thing IMO is the fact you have to be able to cast a Wizard spell to have a familiar. Really WotC? I specifically listed "anyone can have a familiar now" in the survey as the thing I loved MOST about the first playtest material. Because I saw that the wizard's familiar was part of his theme and assumed you weren't *&%$ing in my face when you said themes would be open to everyone.
I didn't really think the Familiar thing was restrictive in anyway. If you take the Magic User specialty Arcane Dabbler gives you 2 spells from the wizard list. Sure they are cantrips but they are still "Spells from the Wizard list." Which inturn qualifies you for the Familiar at 3rd, because cantrips are still "Spells from the Wizard List"
It's that sort of thing that leads me to think Feats can be taken outside of the Specialties. Otherwise why would Find Familiar need a requierment that you already got automtically for taking the Specialty.
I take it none of you have seen the Soul Eater anime :P. Though to be fair, they only ate the souls of demons and witches.
Anywho, as far as the good vs evil implications, I can come up with soem justification for at least a Neutral or Chaotic Good character to use Necromancy.
Necromancy is a tool. Like any tool it's only as good or evil as the person using it(though a Neutral Good could have some reservation about raising innocents, so only raises the bodies of his enemies to fight for him).
To be honest, I have no problem with Necromancy being used by Good characters. To me it is just a use of the neutral Negative Energy Plane from the Wheel.
But destroying souls? That seems needlessly harsh. If a fiend can rise, then even a soul bound for the Abyss should not be snuffed off except in the direst of circumstances.
I take it none of you have seen the Soul Eater anime :P. Though to be fair, they only ate the souls of demons and witches.
Anywho, as far as the good vs evil implications, I can come up with soem justification for at least a Neutral or Chaotic Good character to use Necromancy.
Necromancy is a tool. Like any tool it's only as good or evil as the person using it(though a Neutral Good could have some reservation about raising innocents, so only raises the bodies of his enemies to fight for him).
To be honest, I have no problem with Necromancy being used by Good characters. To me it is just a use of the neutral Negative Energy Plane from the Wheel.
But destroying souls? That seems needlessly harsh. If a fiend can rise, then even a soul bound for the Abyss should not be snuffed off except in the direst of circumstances.
Also, destroying souls at low levels feels corny.
I mentioned it before, but it doesn't say that you destroy souls. It says that you transform souls into spirits. It is those spirits which are then destroyed. It's entirely possible that destroying one of those spirits releases the soul just like destroying a mortal body does.
so why even play a fighter if you can play the paladin the exact same way behaviorally and get added power to boot. "Paladin" is about accepting better game-enhancing mechanics at the price of more rigid in game behavior.
Really? So it goes something like this?
Fighter: "I want to be a paladin." NPC: "Really?" Fighter: "Yes." NPC: "Very well." Starts reading from a holy book while still in-character "Do you accept having to choose and stick to the lawful good alignment, eventhough neither of us actually knows that it exists or what it is?" Fighter: "I do." NPC: "Do you reject good game balance because you accidentally rolled a high Charisma?" Fighter: "What?" NPC: "I don't know what it means either." Fighter: "Oh. Umm, ok I do." NPC: "In the name of all that is metagamey and broken, accept these better game enhancing mechanics." Fighter: "These what?" NPC: "Just get out there and try to fulfill a million different people's notion of good while not violating and part of any of them."
So the system is designed such that every single hit needs to be described to avoid confusion? Here's a scenario. The players are nudists, everybody in the world are nudists, it's not weird, it's totally normal in this land. They are naked and they fight drakes taking damage throughout, but healing up with surges. Later they meet the guy who raised the drakes.
Part 1: I didn't describe any of the hits. What does he see?
Part 2: Lets say I described the drakes as biting the players, yet they healed up. What does he see?
Also, as MechaPilot has mentioned, there's no mention of "souls" anywhere in the feat's rules. Que text: "you can capture the fleeing life energy of a creature that has died... transforming it into a spirit that hovers near you." Life energy <> soul.
Note the similar flavor with the Death Knell spell from 3.x, which likewise makes no deliberate mention of soul-sucking.
