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4 years ago ::
Oct 06, 2009 - 3:11PM
#1
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Date Joined:
Aug 24, 2005
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By Robert J. Schwalb and Stephen Radney-MacFarland
This month's Player's Handbook 3 debut content introduces the Seeker!
Talk about this Article here.
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4 years ago ::
Oct 06, 2009 - 3:15PM
#2
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Date Joined:
Aug 24, 2005
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Maybe I read too much Eberron, but does anyone else feel a little bit like they took some of the 3.5 Artificer's thunder? The ability to imbue weapons with power on the fly seemed like a really strongly Artificer-Related power. --------------- Hmm... I forsee questions about this Inevitable Shot power in the future: Effect: You make a ranged basic attack against an enemy
within 5 squares of the creature you missed, using that
creature’s space as the attack’s origin square. Notice that it doesn't say you must target a different creature. So we can just retarget the same creature again?
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4 years ago ::
Oct 06, 2009 - 3:38PM
#3
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Date Joined:
Mar 12, 2005
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From last month's design and development article: "If a power source and a role appear as key,
defining traits in your opening statement, then you’re
probably in trouble. Sure, a martial controller might
be an interesting idea, but people don’t play D&D to
explore the intersection of a role with a power source.
They want interesting characters, not labels arranged
in a new order!" From the seeker article: "Robert J. Schwalb: For the Player’s Handbook 3, we
wanted to expand the family of primal classes to include
a new controller." Do these guys even talk?
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4 years ago ::
Oct 06, 2009 - 3:42PM
#4
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Date Joined:
May 16, 2007
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That's not the kind of opening statement they're talking about. The closest thing we see to that is at the top of the statblock, “I am the lightning strike, the earth’s upheaval, the unruly sea. I am the bringer of your destruction.” EDIT: Never mind, completely misinterpreted a post. Nothing to see here.
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4 years ago ::
Oct 06, 2009 - 4:38PM
#5
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Date Joined:
May 17, 2001
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From last month's design and development article:
"If a power source and a role appear as key,
defining traits in your opening statement, then you’re
probably in trouble. Sure, a martial controller might
be an interesting idea, but people don’t play D&D to
explore the intersection of a role with a power source.
They want interesting characters, not labels arranged
in a new order!"
From the seeker article:
"Robert J. Schwalb: For the Player’s Handbook 3, we
wanted to expand the family of primal classes to include
a new controller."
Do these guys even talk?
I actually talk a little bit about that in the commentary on the seeker. While we brainstorm and think about things like the martial power source controller and other purely gamist confluences, we will not design one just to design one or to fill a perceived rules niche. When the seeker was brought forward it was a primal controller it had a good and natural game and story hook; one that has been around the D&D game since the beginning, just with different names.
Stephen Radney-MacFarland
Pathfinder RPG Designer
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4 years ago ::
Oct 06, 2009 - 5:08PM
#6
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i don't know how anyone might take this, but it seems like newer classes are getting progressively "cooler". it seems like, "what would be an existing class, but cooler?" "rogue would be so much cooler as an assassin!" and "the ranger really should have been primal powered like a mystic hunter, let's make that next!" "awesome" maybe that's unfair, but i suspect that part of what breaks down the balance of classes is that initial efforts represent a good number of classic stuff, but then the later stuff gets into the progressively cooler and more awesome stuff. it would require a reset to bring the older stuff up to the grade with the later stuff. it seems to me that all the classes should be built simultaneously in order to make sure that the later published stuff doesn't end up as "cooler" versions of the classics. all-in-all, i'm not entirely comfortable with the feel of this class after reading. it seems to be extraordinary compared with several other classes, particularly against PH1 classes.
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4 years ago ::
Oct 06, 2009 - 6:15PM
#7
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Date Joined:
Feb 25, 2003
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I actually talk a little bit about that in the commentary on the seeker. While we brainstorm and think about things like the martial power source controller and other purely gamist confluences, we will not design one just to design one or to fill a perceived rules niche. When the seeker was brought forward it was a primal controller it had a good and natural game and story hook; one that has been around the D&D game since the beginning, just with different names.
Hello SRM. I have an issue with your story directive for the Seeker, though. I understand that you had a cool idea to run a city as a dungeon for a primal party and everything, but what about the PHB2's conciet that nature and civilization are not enemies? This was an entirely logical move for the primal power source. In a medieval fantasy setting like the core Points of Light world, civilization could not possibly be a big enough force to directly threaten nature. There is no global warming, strip mining, or mass deforestation. There are no super-power industrial nations to rapidly consume natural resources. There are hamlets and villages and the occasional walled city. There's no possible way civilization, on its own, could be a big enough threat to "the wild" for the primal spirits to empower people to fight against it specifically. In fact, the Killoren, who fought against the encroachment of civilization in 3.5 were turned into the Wilden for 4e and re-fluffed to fight Far Realm invasions, because that is a much bigger and more realistic threat to the wilderness. If we were just going to go back to civilization-hating-hermits, why did the Killoren's story change? I feel like the flavor of the Seeker puts the primal power source's story back a few steps, into the relatively nonsensical conceits of past editions. The Seeker hunts defilers of nature. The list of nature's enemy should remain as it is in the PHB2, with civilization as a very very small and rare threat.
Planes Wanderer
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4 years ago ::
Oct 06, 2009 - 6:38PM
#8
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The class looks cool, but I don't really care for the flavor. I thought the 4th edition flavor of primal stuff was actually kinda cool, and I honestly kind of hated the "Nature is better" attitude that the older naturey classes had. I avoided Lunars in Exalted and couldn't take the oWoD Werewolf seriously for the same reason. You did the impossible and made me like the nature-flavored power source in PHB2 by distancing it from the old "Civilization is bad" thing. Now run with it.
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4 years ago ::
Oct 06, 2009 - 6:52PM
#9
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Date Joined:
Jan 12, 2008
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Hello SRM. I have an issue with your story directive for the Seeker, though. I understand that you had a cool idea to run a city as a dungeon for a primal party and everything, but what about the PHB2's conciet that nature and civilization are not enemies?
This was an entirely logical move for the primal power source. In a medieval fantasy setting like the core Points of Light world, civilization could not possibly be a big enough force to directly threaten nature. There is no global warming, strip mining, or mass deforestation. There are no super-power industrial nations to rapidly consume natural resources.
There are hamlets and villages and the occasional walled city. There's no possible way civilization, on its own, could be a big enough threat to "the wild" for the primal spirits to empower people to fight against it specifically.
In fact, the Killoren, who fought against the encroachment of civilization in 3.5 were turned into the Wilden for 4e and re-fluffed to fight Far Realm invasions, because that is a much bigger and more realistic threat to the wilderness. If we were just going to go back to civilization-hating-hermits, why did the Killoren's story change?
I feel like the flavor of the Seeker puts the primal power source's story back a few steps, into the relatively nonsensical conceits of past editions. The Seeker hunts defilers of nature. The list of nature's enemy should remain as it is in the PHB2, with civilization as a very very small and rare threat.
Yeah. I'm kind of curious about the role of the primal spirits in the world because we've sort of got, if not mixed messages, certainly very vague ones, especially compared to what we know about the other god-equivalent forces of various planes. Still, it seems like making it seem like the primal spirits care overly much about punishing mortals while ignoring what was painted as the larger problems in PHB2 kind of looks like a step back from the message we were given before. I guess part of the question I have is that, so far, we haven't heard much about how the primal spirits interact with the world, outside of empowering certain people from the wilds to act for them. I'm honestly a little curious about the corner cases of primal characters. Like, PHB2 established that urbanized areas were part of the natural world, especially when compared to extraplanar influence. Are there, in the core D&D concept, barbarians who live in dilapidated slums and draw power from the spirits of vermin and hunger, or shamans who've forged pacts with the primal spirit of their city? I had sort of assumed that the world was animistic and spirits were everywhere, and not just in the wild places, but the Seeker, in terms of the suggested flavor, seems even more tied to the wild than the other primal classes.
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4 years ago ::
Oct 06, 2009 - 7:07PM
#10
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Date Joined:
Apr 25, 2002
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I think the Seeker is really underpowered. I see it having the following problems:
At-wills are all too similar. Two of them have decent potential of harming fellow PCs. This may be because we only see half the character class, but given Strength is the other secondary stat, I don't think that bodes well. Inevitable Shot doesn't work against Solos - if you have the ability to use Inevitable Shot, shoot 2 targets on a miss, and then on top of it spend an action point, that's 4 attacks you just lost in a combat. That's a lot of attacks to lose just because you're fighting a Solo and being in a situation where you need to spend an action point. If you spend a lot of feats to boost inevitable shot, then you're even worse off vs. Solos. And Inevitable Shot in many ways is similar to Orb of Deception - an Illusionist Wizard is often going to have something very similar in effect to Inevitable Shot. Damage. I understand the desire not to be too competitive with actual strikers, but at 27th level, Devouring Arrow is a 2w with a rider. At-wills are also 2w with riders. In Epic, at-wills consistently do more damage than most Paragon Tier encounters. Sure, Devouring Arrow's rider is better, but that brings up the next problem... Riders. Look at Soul Fire - burst 2, does 3d8 to all targets, weakens any hit until end of next turn vs Devouring Arrow. Compare Visions of Wrath(Stunned on a miss, Dominate on hit in a burst) or Legion's Hold(Stun in huge burst) vs. Baleful Shot. Sleep(1st level Wizard) vs Wave of Sleep(15th level Seeker) The riders don't seem competitive. Just to be clear - I like the idea and concept a lot. I don't like how the mechanics match up to it.
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