Community

Originally I accidentally posted this in the classes forums:


I think that an all martial, all-divine, all-arcane, or all-primal party and/or campaign would be very interesting.


Example:

The nation's wizard's guild have sent 4 of their best to investigate unknown magical surges in a distant land. It turns out to be a super race of arcane warriors who are on the rampage to destroy the world.

the party: a Swordmage, a Warlock, a Wizard, and a Bard.


or

Civil war has torn apart the nomad tribes of the Northern Wastelands. The only hope is to destroy the Warlord Madoq who has some sort of supernatural charming hold over his people and who is also raising his dead warriors to fight as undead. The other tribes gather together and choose four of their best to fight Madoq and his army:

the party: a Barbarian, Primal Blaster (striker), Sorceror (primal controller), and a Druid (primal leader)


Just sounds like this kind of campaign makes some very interesting ways to put certain characters together.

What do you all think?

I think it's a great style of play.

Even if you went all one class it would be VERY interesting. Let's say.. all mages.

- A mage who wanted to be a stronger warrior would take things like toughness, and weapon, armor, combat feats.

- One who wanted to be stealthy might take Skill Focus: Move Silently, Hide in Shadows.

- One who wanted to go pure magic would take the standard wizard feats.

Etc.

My only word of caution is that you should be very aware of the dangers you set against this party. You're changing the system fairly radically. Combat encounters would have to be tweaked appropriately.. and DCs would have to be adjusted to account for the fact that a wizard could never have non-Class skill equivalent to a class that possessed it.

Also, since it's going to be 4th Edition given your terminology. It seems like any class will be allowed to take a kind of Skill Set that allows them to dip into other classes. I'm not sure how it will work exactly (there might be more learned forum goers that do) but it could create Wizards with "Cleric Skill Set" allowing for even a healer, or fighter, or rogue "type" for your party.

You would still all be wizards, or all be part of the arcane power source, but dipping would make it so the characters could seperate themselves even further apart while maintaining the theme.

Good stuff, and good luck.

I don't think you are really changing the system to play a campaign or party with one power source because your party could still have a character to fill each role.

Of course as was posted, it will become more viable once the appropriate splat book comes out for that particular power source.

I am seriously considering the possibility of using martial power source only. And everything else will be avalable through multy-classing/class training according to campaign events (you find a magic book - you can learn a rite or a spell or a prayer, you can make a pact in some forgotten temple, your god can give you power to work miracles for you great faith and so on).

We are right now playing in a 3.5 gestalt game where the PCs all have wizard or sorceror as one half their gestalt build (we are the faculty at a wizard's college).

So a single power source game would be a good update to that game, and would be really cool. Once we have the Swordmage and some arcane leader (possibly the Bard) then we'll be pretty good (though the two wizard/druids and the wizard/monk might need to change their concepts slightly to adapt).


But it sounds a lot more viable than in 3rd edition or before. An all arcane party in 3rd ed needed a Hexblade or Duskblade, an Arcan Trickster/Unseen Seer/Spellthief and some sort of arcane healing (Bard or Arcane Disciple feat). And even then the party was poorly arranged for certain encounters that should be easy. But in 4th ed, each role will be filled by a class made to fill that role, so we'll be good.


Except, of course, that the designers don't intend to fill out the chart with every possible combination of role and power source. They've stated that a martial controller is unlikely to ever be published by WotC, for example. And in the 1st PHB we only have an arcane controller.

It is possible to remove either martial or divine characters from the game, with just the 1st PHB. You could have a party with Warlord, Fighter, Rogue or Ranger or Warlock and a Wizard but no Clerics or Paladins. This will help if you have a campaign world with gods who are less hands on, or want a more swords and sorcery style. Removing martial power source from the campaign world would help those people upset by how Tome of Battle defies real world physics, as everyone's powers would be based on magic instead of action movie like superhuman levels of skill.