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The blogosphere has been erupting since the introduction of the Essentials line of products by Wizards of the Coast. Many consumers of the game sensed a fundamental shift in the game’s architecture and became wary of discontinued support of existing content. I have a unique perspective on this event having designed content for both pre and post Essentials. That being said, I have no intimate knowledge or insider information on the development processes that went into this shift. At first glance, and even as content began to be released, I was of the strong opinion that Essentials-style content would remain optional and that the game would continue uninhibited.
This is where I steer the ship off course…
One of the greatest things that Wizards of the Coast has produced for 4e was that of character themes—like the ones found in the Dark Sun Campaign Guide. Character themes are extremely simple in design yet provide a powerful mechanic for shaping the game. I have thought a lot about themes in the past six months and have come the conclusion that their implementation has far wider reaching benefits across any number of sub-systems to the game.
Lets examine
The Dark Sun theme Gladiator provides a template that is laid over top of an existing character. For all intents and purposes, this design does not affect the underlying system and works flawlessly to pull character concepts in new directions. For the first time (in 4e) you could have an Elven Cleric of Correllon that was also a Gladiator—giving the character depth via game mechanics that it could not have otherwise obtained (without a heavy feat tax). The addition of this layer was truly intriguing to me on a personal level and has forced me to reflect deeper on its importance.
By adding layers to a base character in a fashion similar to that of the character themes, you are able to open far more design opportunities without having to change the fundamental system principles. Let’s move on to a specific example that I often use when chatting about it--
My older brother, game design Brian R. James, wrote an article for Dragon magazine awhile back called Playing Dampyr. This article is the perfect example of one that can be used as a template rather than a feat tree. With a simple conversion, you can take all of the amazing fluff of the article and convert it to a more compelling design implementation. Imagine if the Dampyr was a theme template that could be applied to an existing character. It could seamlessly be applied without imposing restrictions in the form of a system tax. This design idea reaches even further now that we have seen a preview for the new Vampire class. In my opinion, having the Vampire designed as a class completely misses a golden opportunity. Now, if you want to have a cool story-arch where one of your PCs is embraced by a vampire lord, you would (in effect) have to completely rebuild the character, giving them a brand new class. This is counter-intuitive. By making the Vampire a character theme, you could have the base character retain its class and race integrity, while still adding the vampiric template. Sure, some features may be gained, but you would balance this with the negative effects of being a powerful undead race.
Multiclassing
Multiclassing is not one of my favorite things about 4e. In fact, I really dislike it—so much that I stay away from it if at all possible. For example, spending a feat to gain a single class feature, and maybe a skill bump, was uninspiring to say the least. One of my biggest (and most broken; system-wise) characters is a Half-Orc Paladin of Tempus (need I say more?). This character has multiclassed into Cleric and had to do so with the use of feats. In addition, because I wanted to add some beefier healing powers, I had to spend even more feats. This is not inherently bad, but it started to take away from some of the other cool areas of my character. What if, instead of having to use feats to multiclass into a cleric, I instead applied a multiclass character theme instead? With the use of the theme, I would gain some abilities inherent to the Cleric class, but not so much that it would take away from the Core class. This would be easy to implement and would help to define my character the way that I want without compromising the integrity of the game engine/system.
Half [Insert Race]
It would also be prudent to use the character theme implementation when dealing with half-races as well. There is no need to have entire race write-ups for Half-Elves and Half-Orcs (beyond backstory) when you could instead handle this via (wait for it…) a character template. So now, instead of having an entire race, you could have a template that provides racial adaptations to the base character race. For instance, if you wanted to play a Half-Elf you would have to first choose a base race (Elf or Human). After your base race is chosen, you would then apply the Half-Elf/Human template to your character. In effect, this would show one race having predominate features over the other. As thus, two Half-Elves could be completely different (one having more human traits, whereas the other has more elven).
Layers
By applying layers to a base character, in the form of templates, you really open the game up to brand new avenues of play without compromising the core mechanics. Many of the features and strengths of the new Essentials races and classes could have been developed this way. I won’t go as far to say that WotC missed anything, or did something poorly. I will say that it may be an opportunity to grow for the future. All of the errata and changes in the math could have been fixed using this method, and you could still provide relevant content for players new and old.
If you liked this article and would like for me to draft some of the ideas presented, please respond here.
Bio
Matt James is a freelance game designer for Wizards of the Coast. His design credits include Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale, as well as numerous articles in Dungeon Magazine and Dragon Magazine. Matt recently had a sourcebook released with Open Design (publishers of Kobold Quarterly) called Soldiers of Fortune. When Matt isn’t having celebrities bless his dice, he lives a quiet life in the Washington, DC area with his wife and two Chihuahuas.
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