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Everybody has a favorite. Class, that is. A certain role that they take to like shine on a wooden table. Some people even have multiples, which is all fine and dandy. We don't have to be married to one character class for our entire lives, we can keep a "wife in every port," so to speak.

When I started playing D&D back in early 2003, the choice was a simple one. "What, they have BARDS?" For the longest time, I went by the monicker Erico the Super Bard, after all. And I enjoyed them. Of course, this was back when we were still playing 3rd edition, which meant that I was dropping my Bardic Knowledge Check in every direction. How did I know any better? It was a strange new game and world I was playing in. Anything could have been significant.

Okay, okay. So maybe investigating the drainage grate in the first dungeon we explored for clues was pushing it.

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About a year later, I was with the gaming crew at my College, and there was talk of yet another game. I thought about it for a bit. Everyone else was making up Sorceror/Rogues, monks, god knows what else...

So I said, "I think I'll make a cleric."

You'd have to know how sick and wrong this crew was to realize that NOBODY ever plays a Cleric. The DM let out a squeal of glee, and I swear if I'd been sitting next to him, he would have hugged the stuffings out of me. So I cut my teeth on making a cleric, and let me tell you, you get an intimate knowledge of how to make a cleric work early on when you're stripped of all your possessions and have to re-learn your spellbook...specifically, what spells you can cast without a divine focus.

Boy, how it pissed him off when I used Ethereal Jaunt and ran through walls, enemies, and even a dragon to escape the prison and make it out to the others.

And the funny thing is, the cleric I made was the polar opposite of what usually got played. He was, in popular vernacular, a silver-haired, iron-bodied Bishounen, or "Bishie." Not that I'm in to Bishies, but when you're routinely the only guy on the team playing a good character, you tend to make the GOODEST good you can and hope for the best.

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So now, in the age of 4th edition, do I has a favorite? Who am I?

Oh, Bards still have a very large soft spot in my heart. I play one in a campaign where I'm part of an elite squadron in a Mercenary army, and he does pretty well for himself...as long as we're not rolling diplomacy checks. It amazes me how he has the highest Diplomacy modifier on the team, and the d20 thinks it can take it easy by rolling 3s and 4s. I'm also the only guy on the team, after a year's worth of player attrition (So yes, there's the potential for a little nudge nudge...), which changed the dynamic a fair deal. Right now, he's going through a crisis of confidence, because his actions have led to a few major upsets that have made life very hard on the team.

And I still play clerics, and if you couldn't tell, I enjoy the stuffings out of wizards, and Sorcerors are okay too. And Paladins. And Battleminds. (Oh, GOD. Battleminds. There's a topic for a post all on their own!)

Truth be told, I play in about 15 different play by post games on the Weave, which gives me the opportunity to "Play the field", as it were with 4th edition. And in the end, it's also allowed me to reach a new understanding in terms of a favorite.

Perhaps I don't have favorite classes, as much as I do favorite CHARACTERS. No matter how awesome the abilities, skillsets, or battlefield alteration any one class is capable of, all those details pale in comparison to what you, the player, bring to the table. It's us, the roleplayers, that fill them with life, that give them personality, foibles, a way of gallivanting across whatever campaign world they play in.

We'll always argue about the merits of one class over another, or who makes the bestest Cleric with Character Optimization, but above all of that is the most important detail:

You get from the game, what you put into the game.

And that's the Iowa perspective.

-Erico

Well, now! One day, and 39 views? And to think that was my first post. Well, then.

I've had some time now to look over details about Magic Missile's update and turn to a sounding board from some fellow players I associate with (Primarily at www.myth-weavers.com), and the thinking goes that they agree with the auto-hit function, but wish that the damage wasn't static. By that, of course, the thinking is, "Why did they take away a damage roll?"

Damage rolls do more than add some variability into the mix: There are items that some wizards favor for which require a damage roll for their additional effects. Examples?

1) Dragontooth Wand- A superior implement, the Dragontooth Wand adds +1 to all damage rolls wizards make with attack powers through it.

2) Forbidden Tome- Again, same thing. +1 to all damage rolls.

3) Guardian Staff- Now, this is a biggie for Magic Missile users. It gives +2 to all damage rolls with attack powers that have the Force Keyword. Guess which wizard At-Will is the only one that has the Force Keyword?

4) Petrified Orb- This Orb Superior Implement has the same +2 to Force Damage that the Guardian Staff has.

5) Staff of Missile Mastery- I mentioned this in the last post, but this will require some re-writing, as it still has a specific critical damage clause related to Magic Missile...which can no longer happen, since Magic Missile doesn't use attack rolls. The Item Bonus to damage still works though, because it doesn't rely on a damage roll. #1-4 on this list do.

6) Master's Wand of Magic Missile- This one actually suffers the least from the change, but it'll take some getting used to before we remember that Magic Missile can no longer Critical Hit.

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So, the big problem with the update is the lack of a damage roll. Without it, the Superior Implements listed (#1-4 above) are made more or less useless when a wizard turns to his basic power. Now, there's three possible ways the men and women of the R&D Staff in Seattle could handle this:

1) Ignore it, and let Magic Missile suffer

2) Rewrite every single one of those items so that the bonus to damage rolls instead becomes a straight "+1/+2 to damage with attacks made through this implement."

3) Rewrite Magic Missile's damage quota, making it look something like I suggested last night:

Heroic Tier: 1d4+INT Damage.

Paragon Tier: 2d4+INT Damage.

Epic Tier: 4d4+INT Damage.

Now, my personal vote would be for #3, in terms of a second fix, because it would require the least amount of errata modification, and supply maximum effectiveness. Magic Missile will still hit automatically, and yes, the damage might not be quite as impressive as it was before...

But there is the CHANCE that it could. And every time we roll a polyhedral die, we're living for the possibility that it'll come up high and in our favor. It's one of the things that makes the game interesting, and with all the various Controller Types available, I'd hate to see the wizard, the first and foremost of the archetype, fall by the wayside for being seen as "Boring."

And that's the Iowa perspective.

-Erico

We've all heard the old joke: "I cast Magic Missile! I'm attacking the darkness!"

You ask any casual gamer to name a D&D spell, they'll come up with one of two answers, usually: Fireball, and Magic Missile. And for the players, Magic Missile is the one we remember. Why? It's the one we grew up using.

When 4th Edition rolled around, the first page in the Handbook I went to was the one that talked about how the Wizard class was going to be handled. And sure enough, there was Magic Missile...not quite the same one I remember.

Admittedly, I was a little thrown at first that Magic Missile now required an attack roll. There was a chance it might MISS? The un-missable Missile?! Why, that just didn't seem right...but the other things made up for it. It did a fair skosh of damage right out of the box, and given that almost every other wizard attack had some alternative effect (Pushing, slowing, dazing, ongoing), for an At-Will, Magic Missile wasn't too shabby.

When I began playing a wizard in my first 4th edition game, I began to call Magic Missile my "When you absolutely want to make something dead" power.

Of course, that was before the Update here in July. To review:

-Magic Missile no longer requires an attack roll. It hits automatically.

-Magic Missile, in the heroic tier, deals 2+INT Mod damage, instead of 2d4+INT.

Okay then. We've removed the random quotient from the process, and given wizards back the essence of their most basic spell from 3rd edition, but at a pretty noticeable cost in power.

Take your average 1st level wizard. Most players, unless they're going for a 16/16 spread between Primary/Secondary ability scores, will make sure that they have an 18 in Intelligence, which means that under the new power, they'd deal 6 damage. Boom, they wiggle their fingers and it happens.

With the power as it was before the July 2010 Update, they'd deal 6 damage regardless, even if both of the d4s came up as 1s.

Now, I'm all for restoring the auto-hit function of Magic Missile, but a lot of what makes 4th edition work is that almost every attack power has an element of randomness. (And by the by, Wizards, you might go back and recheck the Staff of Missile Mastery; you left in the "Deals 1d8 on a critical if using Magic Missile" text in the new update.) You might deal the bare minimum, you might deal the maximum and then some, but most days, you had damage somewhere in the middle.

Somewhere between auto-hit and minimal damage (We might say, unnoticeable damage, especially once we're 7th level and monsters have 60-100 HP easy), there has to be a solution. And here's one idea:

Heroic Tier: 1d4+INT Damage.

Paragon Tier: 2d4+INT Damage.

Epic Tier: 4d4+INT Damage.

With this possible configuration, the power is still weaker than it was to begin with, but it has the chance of making a bigger dent in something than the bare minimum it had before. And in the game of D&D, the bigger the number, the more that the player feels he's made a valuable contribution during the combat round.

And that's the Iowa perspective.

-Erico