Alexjh

The question here would be not only how common mages are, but how common powerful mages are. If we had a population where 1 in 500 people had some sort of magical ability, that sounds high, but then if we assume for every 500 mages, only about 10 can cast more than cantrips, and only 2 of those 10 are powerful enough to be regarded as powerful enough to be a "battlemage", then magic is rare enough that it wouldn't be feasible for most places to use them as any sort of bulk industry. What would be one possible result is instead of using mages to power mass production, different nations might have different jobs that mages can basically walk into. Some might have covens of diviners and battlemages responsible for magically protecting the borders at a distance, or some might train them to be specific artisans once the talent is discovered, not just limited to the traditional "weapon enchanting" that many fantasy games seem to possess. A set of magical tools created by a master mage might be a more efficient way of using mages to power industry than having them do it themselves. Crafting a ring of immunity to fire would be a huge boon for a rich (royally appointed?) metal workers, as would things like a perfectly balanced ladder, magical lights, magically gripping shoes etc. Another possibility I've seen in some novels was the idea of magic levitating carts/land barges - if you had a wagon that hovered a foot off the ground, what you actually have is a version of a canal without having to build a canal - you can carry huge weights of material with only a single or pair of horses fairly quickly across the land, which was one of the major developments of the industrial revolution. These things would still be fairly rare and expensive, but for companies who can afford these things (like the actual Industrial Revolution) if you can buy them, it's going to majorly benefit your business.

I think you are mistaking combat roles with classes a little, and while certainly classes tend to fall into variations of the core 4, the reason more exist is down to nuance and "flavour" of a character rather than pure mechanical optimal party roles. Sure a fighter may be the best no-frills melee class for instance, but in my many playthroughs of the Icewind Dale games it is by far my least used class purely because it doesn't have that "flavour" to it. Beyond that, I prefer Monks, Paladins, Rangers and Barbarians to exist as seperate entities because they do have mechanical differences, strengths and weaknesses. If you have a front line consisting entirely of rangers for instance, your front line will be fairly soft defensively but more versatile that a wall of paladins. Part of the whole fun of the Infinity Engine was making a carefully constructed party to your personal playstyle - with more limited classes you lose that, even if you still have all the internal features of those available within a "fighter" class it removes a layer of tactical party building because you aren't forced to choose so much.

Really, the consequences of going unarmored should prohibit tanking IMO. Dodging gets v. hard as soon as you're facing multiple foes in a crowded area. The only situation I can imagine is monks "tanking" against magic users. That could be their domain. Though there are two things to say about Tolkien's Dunedain rangers: 1) They have a very detailed backstory 2) it's still p. horrible I know classes like the rogue don't have a general backstory either, but their concept is more self-explanatory If this was a non-fantasy game we were dealing with I'd agree with the monk being not that great at dodging because proportionatly dodging isn't that practical compared to say, a crossbow bolt. HOWEVER this is a fantasy setting where we have people who can smite people with pure force of will, channel their devotion to their god, empower people with storytelling or blast fire from their hands, I'm quite happy to believe that people can can train themselves into having superhuman dodging powers. As for the backstory of rangers, it can just as equally be a backstory about any guerilla fighters in the world, or, for an actual organised one something like the original purpose of the Canadian Mountain Police.

I think you have to consider what exactly you mean by tank there, if you mean in the general sense of "a tough character to draw attention from others" I don't think thats outside their remit, but the way they do it should be different to a way a fighter or barbarian does it. Fighters most obviously function in that role because their armour prevents them getting hit/damaged, while a barbarian should be getting hit fairly often, it's his high HP and/or damage resistance (which I choose to interpret as them being badass enough to shrug off minor wounds). Monks in contrast, if tanking, should be doing so because they are never actually getting hit, in D&D because of a mixture of high dexterity and their WIS armour bonus allowing them to anticipate incoming attacks enough to get out the way, which is fine given thats the standard route they go in any martial arts film, which the class is based off. But if they do get hit it should be serious. Whether P:E will have something equivical to that remains to be seen. I don't think rangers necessarily need a general backstory (although specific orders of them might) as such as its more a "role" like fighter and rogue than a specific "profession" like monks, paladins or clerics. Realistically there are several forms of ranger that fall within their remit: the classic originator one of resembling Aragorn is more or less a man or woman whose job it is to protect a certain area of wilderness. This could be that it's a stretch of wilderness borders on an enemy territory or one that is prone to monster infestations. I'd argue the premise is largely that of a guerilla fighter and you could just as easily have the monster hunting model of the class as someone who just happens to live in a cabin in the woods and resorts to the same tactics to defend themselves. I reckon while there might certainly be specific orders of Rangers in P:E perhaps with specific benefits/focuses, it shouldn't by any means be an exclusive class, just any mobile fighter who uses the natural environment to his advantage.

I don't have anything against time limits persay, but only if they aren't of the "win/game-over" variety. If you only have 30 minutes to fight your way up the castle before the princess is sacrificed at dawn thats fine, so long as the game continues if you fail and you have to live with the consequences. Perhaps even have some of the time limit scenarios be of the kind where you (actively) failed the initial plan, but someone suggests a "well if you act quickly!" alternative. There were a couple of time limits in IWD2 that worked fine - rescuing the sacrifice victims from the ice temple and stopping the ogres destroying the bridge on the Shaerngarne were nebulous enough threats that you knew there was a time limit on it, but you could fail both and still carry on, but it added a sense of urgency and priority that helped focus the strategies of the area.

You don't have to min-max, you know. That's Munchkin behavior. It should be enough that a character is interesting and fun to roleplay. If you speaking about IRL games with people, - maybe. But, no offense, who cares about PnP geeks and their so-called "roleplay". in C(omputer)RPG? If you wanna "roleplay" why you play games, why just not going to DnD-club to "roleplay" with you friends? Character optimization is essential part of PC gaming and CRPG. Also I said nothing about "min-max". I just said that Paladin in DnD is Leader of a group, it is strange that "Leader" is not required INT. You have noticed that this genre is called "roleplaying games" right? Just checking. As for character optimisation, part of the point in a semi-open ruleset like D&D is that there isn't a singular optimal build. Sure most classes have one or two attributes they fundamentally need, but a build where a Paladin has 18 strength at the cost of 8 intelligence isn't fundementally better than one with 16 strength and 10 intelligence, indeed, part of the entire point of the D&D system is that every stat has some benefit for every character and actively below normal stats ARE to the detriment of a character. As for the idea of Paladin's requiring Intelligence, they make do on wisdom instead. I quote the definition of Wisdom from the 3rd Edition Players handbook: "Wisdom describes a characters willpower, common sense, perception and intuition. While intelligence represents ones ability to analyse information, Wisdom is more related to being in tune with and aware of ones surroundings". Which sounds fine for a battle leader as opposed to intelligence which is more about "how well your character learns and reasons". Generally speaking in terms of group leadership, the leader doesn't need to be spectacularly intelligent, just in tune enough to make a call and have the charisma to make people follow through, they have (high INT) advisors for the actual number crunching. As for Paladins being group leaders, they were never supposed to be leaders specifically in D&D, they just tend to gravitate that way because they are a high charisma class, and unlike sorcerers and bards tend to have more of an agenda to push through. Even the P:E one where they mention being a leader specifically as it's more based off the Warlord class, this is generally more of an inspirational thing - the kind of thing where at the start of a battle the charge is lead by your paladin showing no fear to inspire everyone else etc than the paladin literally shouting tactics around the battlefield.

Well...yes it does. OK can we stop this idiotic assumption now, I've seen it far too much and it's offensive to real world people who have religious beliefs. Religious does not mean the same thing as zealot, the former meaning "one who has a religion" the latter meaning "extreme or fanatical devotion to a cause". I'm an atheist, but I have friends and acquaintances who include Christians both CoE, Catholic and assorted other, Muslims, Jews and Jains, and they are all perfectly reasonable people who just happen to have spiritual beliefs, which is frankly no one's business except their own. The only zealots I'm seeing around here are the atheist ones under the very medieval assumption that any belief system other than their own (atheism) are fundamentally bad things to be wiped out. It frankly makes me embarrassed to call myself an atheist.

Well, being a fighter is not like being a street fighter, but pretty much the same as being a warrior. Being a ranger is nothing like a park ranger, but a lot like being a tracker. Being a monk is far from being a Benedictine monk, but pretty much the same as being a shaolin monk. All the while being a paladin is very unlike anything that has ever been called by that name. This is no surprise, since the word itself translates as 'courtier' and has no relation to religion at all. So we end up with a silly concept and an unfitting name. PE will change both of this facts, what's more to desire? If we are going down the semantic argument route, all the divine classes have the same problems, D&D Clerics and Druids are in no way related to any normal sort of concept of those things. Also we must bear in mind that derivation of a word isn't the same as contemporary meaning, if you have a quick skim around online dictionaries you'll see 3 definitions: 1) Any one of the 12 legendary peers or knightly champions inattendance of Charlemange. Not only does this specify knightly right off the bat, but if you read into these specific guys, via the lazy option of wikipedia we get the phrase "...where they represent martial Christian valor..." in reference to their first appearances. 2) any knightly or heroic champion 3) any determined advocate or defender or a noble cause. Now, personally those all sound pretty much like things that connect to the D&D concept of a Paladin, and indeed, all the references to real world Paladins/Palatine at a quick skim are connected to Christianity. Out of a bit of interest, as etymology is a vague interest of mine and I'm a little bored, here's the distant starting points of the other class names as I'm looking them up: Barbarian: theorised to be from "barbar", a word vaguely equivelant to "blahblahblah" (representing unintelligble foreign languages) in the form of languages that formed the basis of indoeuropean languages. Chanter: Chanting seems to be fairly similar, the only difference is the word derrives from singing in general, not a specific form. Cipher: Originally meant "zero" in arabic Druid: Apparently from Gaulish via latin, something along the lines of "they who know the oak". Fighter: Couldn't quite understand the description, but sounds like the word "fight" comes from something along the lines of "to pluck" Monk: Comes from words meaning alone/solitary. Priest: Again, only going on a few seconds of research is fairly murky, but looks like it comes from something meaning "elder" eventually. Ranger: Again my lightning research not entirely fruitful, but from a row or line, via row or line of people, especially hunters or soldiers, largely via French Rogue: Seems to be primarily from "idle vagrant/beggars" Wizard: From the word "wise", apparently the specific connection to magic wasn't distinct until the 1550s. Now that had nothing greatly to do with anything really beyond a bit of research whimsy, but just goes to show that original meanings change.

I think this is one of those cases where the difference between the general word and the class name have to be viewed as independent, being a fighter is not the same as being a Fighter, being a park ranger is not the same as being a Ranger, being a Benadictine monk is not the same as being a Monk etc. I would say that really, the D&D Paladin would make more sense being spread down all the lawful alignments but with mechanical differences for each. Paladins should in my view, always be about someone with a code, whether it be one they've made up for themselves, one given to them by a God or one given to them by a political organisation. Even if the God is Chaotic Evil, if they want to produce a holy warrior that abides by the themes of their religion that makes them lawful in a way. But chaotic deities would be less inclined to creating "orders" anyway as that's very much a lawful thing to do. Blackguards are a bit of a weird concept, but I concieve them as being evil deities reaction to the creation of paladins - the idea of holy knights is nothing new, but in a world where there are literal gods and goddesses of evil around, it could only make sense for them to react. In the real world, as we don't have many deities that are explicitly evil, the closest we come is deities that are percieved as evil from the outside - so the Aztec sacrifice-capturing Jaguar Warriors might be an example of a Blackguard. They are seen as holy warriors, its just that their particular brand of "holy" revolves around slavery and human sacrifice.

See I don't take that example of the mages as that great an example, or more precisely if you bunched up all the elemental mages into an evoker class, the difference between the playstyle of a mage who does nothing but throw fireballs and lightning and a dedicated illusionist is arguably potentially bigger than between rogue and fighter, so there is no fundemental reason why they *shouldn't* be separate classes. The problem is more that the vanilla wizard is loitering around linking the two together and being the equivalent of a swiss army knife in comparrison. Arguably, it'd actually be more interesting if the way mages were designed forced you to specialize, and if you did want to learn a bit of magic from outside your specialisation you'd have to dedicate some learning to it. The issue of keeping classes distinct is a tricky one but not impossible, and I think the 3rd Edition of D&D manages it fairly well through automatically gained abilities. As I covered earlier, there is definitly variety within the fighting classes, but I think the problem we are having here is not that the secondary fighting classes are too niche, but that the core fighting class is too nebulous mechanic wise - of all the classes it it by far the most non-descript and perhaps refining that focus a little would equal it out against the other classes. The fighter as in 3rd Edition is basically the man on the front line defined by composing their own combat style from feats of equivalent, he is the self made warrior while paladin, monk and barbarian particularly achieve their respective nuance of roles by focusing on learning a specific set of (automatically acquired) techniques and bonuses. This is where are are looking at the problem of "well if fighters are the basic fighting class, why don't you branch out from there?". So this is why fighters get all those bonus feats in 3rd Edition, as a counterbalance to the lack of any external linearity to their training that the others have the luxury of having. But perhaps that is a little too broad because it does encourage the concept of building a class which literally overlaps the remit of every single class apart from wizard, including the "core 4" rogue and cleric. So, if we were literally just overhauling 3rd edition (which we aren't but as we don't know what we ARE doing lets do this for now) perhaps have those bonus feats only usable in more limited ways - in weapon focus, in armour use (I now see the logic of taking away plate as a default skill from everyone but paladins in 4th, its forcing the fighter to make more decisions than coasting knowing he can do anything). Perhaps change the ways weapon proficiencies are aquired at character creation - every class gets their own default set (paladins and clerics the weapons of their order/faith, wizards get nothing, monks only light dexterity based things etc) but the fighter, the self made warrior, gets to choose what set they start with. You could even apply the same principle to armour - the fighter gets to specialise in a specific armour in a way the other classes have to spend their own free points to learn. The fighter, at say 5th level, you get to choose whether you want to focus on chainmail or whatever. Make the fighter about being one with their equipment in a way that doesn't come naturally to the other classes. Sure they can try to take a bit of ground from the barbarian or ranger if they want with their own "free feats", but at the end of the day, they aren't about rage, or about holy smiting or turning their body into a weapon, they are about how to use a sword or shield of armour really really well.

You would consider Catholics as religious people? No, right? Most religions are formed by terrestrial wisdom, which by no means hold any sort of relation with a God. Therefore, they cannot be viewed as religious people. You've never seen Crusaders perform miracles, right? Those who are more favoured than others in the use of divine magic, have clearly established a new sort of relationship with their God/Gods, not their Orders. Most of you people tend to simplify the case with an Arthurian order of knights who follow a moral code. This is not the case, mainly because none of these knights have any sort of Magic/Spells, therefore they are nothing more than mere warriors following a common traditional (Yet sinful) goal. They are not Paladins. Rome - Vatican City, Vatican City - Rome It's the same thing. When I mentioned the "Throne of Rome", I meant the Pope. Someone who has clearly mixed politics with religion, leaving Christianity with no Saints at all. Same should apply for an Order which emphasizes in the world, rather than their God. I am not quite sure what you mean by that first bit can you try explaining it again? As a major issue, there is very minimal presence of the idea of "magic" in historical religions beyond perhaps faith healing and exorcism to my knowledge, certainly nothing faintly resembling the battle clerics of fantasy games so the clerics are far more an abstraction than the paladin. What we do have is warriors who have performed miracles - most notably Joan of Arc and Galahad as far as popular culture is concerned. In the latter's case, the whole point of the character is that he is the only one pure enough to see the grail. Bearing in mind the Knights of the Round table are specifically mentioned as being one of the foundations archetypes of the class. This is possibly where we have to make differentiations about the origins on the archetype: the premise of orders of knights who seek to fulfill a cause is largely separate to the premise of warriors with holy powers. The classical fantasy paladin is a combination is a merging of these two, there isn't that much of a precedend for the paladin in its modern form to my knowledge. The real world paladins certainly made no claim to mystical powers.

You are simultaniously trying to argue that "characters should be focused on individual motivations" while also arguing that "all paladins are zealots". This contradicts itself: individual paladins aren't automatons that suddenly throw reason, justice and fairness out the window in a precisely equal way, and different orders of paladins would function function differently. Having a belief system doesn't make one a zealot. If an order of Paladin's had the following doctorines: A paladin must never be the first to draw their weapon. A paladin must protect the weak from oppression, regardless of race, religion or creed. A paladin must always accept surrender when offered and deliver them to a fair trial. A paladin must never lie, cheat, steal or use poison or attack without a warning. Is a very different order of paladins to one which had: A paladin must always obey the commands of their superior. A paladin must not permit a wizard to live. A paladin must slay any evil wherever it is seen using whatever means at their disposal. Both fall into the category of potential paladin. The second is kind of what you see as the corrupt Paladin archetype, but the first is equally within the archetype. As for the clock metaphor, more of what I'm suggesting is, to use my own metaphor, saying a character is, say, neutral evil is the same as casually saying a painting is a blue painting. The painting may be most obviously blue, but it might have lots of red or green in it if you look closely, and furthermore, saying a painting is blue doesn't really say what shade of blues it may be made up of. As I said anyway I don't mind getting rid of alignment, but its not really half as offensive a system as you seem to think.

It simply fits me general view of a Paladin. I wouldn't view them as lawful at all, that's why I hated Baldur's soo much. All those are governed by a political institution which use a false religious/philosophical image. -The Knights of the Round Table: First World Order, World Peace, The Light of the World... Hmm, reminds me of something. -Jedi: Corrupted by their own laws, they never sought the true source of the force (Midi-Chlorians), that's why none of them resurrected but one, Qui Gon (Which could easily be the only true "Paladin" figure). -Captain America: A guy who operates under the United States of America with the President at his side? Give me a break. -A Jihad leader: Murderers with a political background, same as the Crusaders (Obeying the Throne of Rome?) -Samurai: These guys are the worst examples of a Paladin. -Star Trek Captains: Guys who follow the Federation of Obey us or you'll be Destroyed. What are we really aiming for here? The concept of a "false religious/political" image doesn't make sense. They are religions or politics, they aren't "false", they may be noble, monsterous, kind, cruel, one might have a specific belief in one thing, one might believe in the opposite . Whether you personally deem them good or evil, right or wrong is purely subjective, they exist or "exist". As for paladins and equivalents of whatever belief system these are, the important thing is that they believe in it, and its teachings, it doesn't matter if you agree with them. I'm also slightly baffled by what versions of these thing's you've been watching/reading about - Rome had nothing to do with the crusades, and was long gone by that point (Holy Roman Empire perhaps, but that wasn't really that much to do with Rome), Captain America in all his appearances since the 60s has always been a character who goes with what he thinks is right, not what he is being told to do (his enemies are largely Nazi's so he kind of has to do the opposite), the Federation can be a bit cruel, but doesn't really invade anyone in any episode I've ever watched, with your Star Wars stuff it sounds like you are going with some sort of extended-universe thingy which isn't really the same canon as the film. Samurai are very much the same base archetype as Paladins, just through a different cultural lens - both are highly code based warriors who believe martial prowess is the way to protect their respective codes/charges. As for where you've got your view of paladin I'm not sure, even their name suggests deference to authority, its etymology originally goes back to something like "palace official".

That's a bit inflexible surely? I certainly think there should be zealots with the Paladin orders who are like that, but every organisation is made of factions and individuals with different beliefs and views. Certain orders might be more extreme than others, but if you go completely down that direction 100%, not only are they less interesting but it kind of puts it in a situation where every single member of a class is missing the point of their own class...

You never did undestand aligment really, did you? Aligment is a guideline. Tendancy. Aspiration. It's not an abosolute. And IIRC; you could connvince Keldorn to stay with his wife. Also, how is he narrow-minded? Beliving path X is the right path to take in not narrowmindedness. Alignment is a weak device, and the mechanics built around it made it fairly absolute, because it never makes sense to stray from your alignment. that prevents a character from having an arc. "This is the way they think, and this is how they'll always think" A Bard can't become lawful, and a paladin can't become neutral, where as rangers aren't allowed to take up a cause other than what the game designers have determined is a neutral cause. Why must my assassin be evil? why is a class linked not to a skillset but to alignments? Must I accept that people choose to be evil, or that those who have a good alignment will therefor be good. that's incredibly dumb.So yeah, I don't understand alignments, they don't make sense, are incredibly unrealistic, limit role-playing, make characters more 1-dimensional, and there is an infinitely better alternative available: Not having alignments, but character motivations. I didn't want Keldorn to stay with his wife, his wife clearly didn't love him anymore. but in his narrowminded mind-set there were only 2 solutions, prison or back into an unhappy marriage. If Keldorn can't think outside those options, then clearly he is narrow-minded. I think a lot of the confusion here is that the terminology of D&D isn't the same as real life, and while I'll agree that some of those are silly (Bards and barbarians can't be lawful?) some of the others do make sense. Monks only being lawful makes sense because they require huge amounts of discipline to do their things, similarly Paladins as always lawful makes sense because part of their thing is that wholehearted believe in their cause and cannot stray from its dogma, because if nothing else, the Paladin trainers would have booted out someone who didn't meet those standards before they became a full paladin. Druids are a bit of a funny one, I can see what they are trying to get at, but it strikes me as slightly paradoxical - the very act of strictly being neutral is a lawful action. An Assassin is not anyone who assassinates someone but a specific discipline, and clearly, if you are going to be killing someone for pay or just for instructions you aren't good. Arguably perhaps you should be able to have assassins of the neutral alignments too, but certainly not good unless you've tricked your way into getting the training. But if you think they limit roleplaying, I hate to say this, but in terms of tabletop games you are doing it wrong. You should have a concept of your characters motivations independent of alignment, and its where what you do conflicts with their most basic principles (alignment) that you get the juice of character development and the nuances. As for Keldorn, he is narrow minded, but that's because he's a narrow minded character, not because his alignment dictates that it be so. A different lawful good paladin in his situation might agree to a divorce, or even let her remarry that other guy, or another one again might have killed her to satisfy his honour. Keldorn is a zealot, but that's just him, and that's why he's an interesting character to discuss.

While I see why some people would want that, I find I have problems with that which are demonstrated by both Dragon Age and Elder Scrolls - fundementally, the fewer classes you have the less interesting characters people naturally produce. This is generally because people will try to produce optimal builds within any one class rather than working to character concept. If you have a single class for each of the 3 (or 4) roles within a party, there is less of a dynamic within the party, even if you give them the option to do different stuff within a class it ends up rather muddy as people try to have their cake and eat it, say, a Barbarian who can lay on hands etc. Besides, these are specific disciplines, in real life though there is some overlap in training, if you are being trained by a tribe of barbarians they train you as a barbarian, not as a fighter who can then specialise into being a barbarian, and monks even more so, they are all about being trained from youth in their very specific discipline. By having a medium number of distinct classes (not going overboard, I think 15 at the very very highest) you make the composition of your party more tactical and interesting than a situation where you can get every single one of your front liners to learn rage or lay on hands or whatever. Party based combat is about having the right characters i nthe right place at the right time, if every character can be the right character, it kind of spoils it a bit...

For a religious knight brand paladin (not the P:E necessarily) I do like the idea of some limited magical abilities (lay on hands, smite, turn undead, immunity to fear etc) but I'd say the idea of Paladins as spellcasters isn't ideal. If we are getting that from some of the Arthurian Knights (Galahad and Lancelot particularly) it makes sense for them to have some limited ability to perform wonders, but not necessarily in the form of casting literal spells. I'd rather prefer a system a little like D&D sorcerers but applied to abilities, where they can perform a limited number of "miracles" from a selection per day, unlocking new ones as they level up. Perhaps you might even earn the ability through particularly valorous deeds to perform a greater miracle. It'd be VERY hard and rare to earn them, doing something in such a way as to have the absolute perfect outcome using only the methods sanctioned by your deity. But once you have one in hand it's basically a get out of jail free card, it wouldn't be an automatic victory, but it might grant you near invulnerability for a single battle or ressurect your entire party when all hope is lost or even be a direct divine intervention to protect some innocents you have sworn to protect. Of course this is based on the religious aspect which isn't fundemental to the P:E class. I think it's interesting to see what falls within the classes in terms of non-explicitly classed characters, and taking the paladin as a front line fighter who is dedicated to a cause and inspires others through their charisma, we get: - The Knights of the Round Table - Jedi - Captain America - Superman - A Jihadi leader - Samurai (but not necessarily Ronin) - Arguably several of the Star Trek captains Any other additions?

I'd strongly disagree with the " He's not regulated by oaths nor rules." That's just a fighter, to me, though I don't think they necessarily have to be good, they should certainly lean lawful in so much as they are a class about gaining the trust of the men and women who fight beside him, and you can't do that by being chaotic and whimsical. To me the concept of Paladins has always tied back to the Knights of the Round table, not necessarily the best fighter on the field technically, but powered by their beliefs in the same way that a barbarian is powered by his rage and with the power to spread that to those around them, via either spells or pure charisma depending on the setting. I'm not sure if you added the word paladin to Icewind Dales chaotic good alignment or you found it that way? They might not always be in the right, but if, say, one says he'll defend a bridge from a horde of monsters, he'll stand on that bridge until either all the monsters are dead, or he is. Certainly not some "pious cop who doesn't play by the rules" as a standard, although they may certainly only play by the rules they personally agree with or have sworn to. A good example of a contemporary Paladin character in my eyes would be Captain America - ie. a character who is certainly dangerous, but whose most potent weapon is arguably that he makes those around him up their games and feel the importance of their cause.

I'd honestly like a range of endings, and give the player the ability to mess things up. However, if you don't want a pure "sunshine and lollypops" type ending, I don't have any issue with a bittersweet one, eg. a pyrrhic victory. I'd even quite happily take a "best" ending where you trade the threat of one evil today for a different evil later, but I'd rather not end on a complete downer as that kind of runs counter to the heroic fantasy genre.

That's definitely the case. They're also all Indo-European, and have thus developed from the same source. Hehe! Except that Tolkien used woses too, only he called them wood-woses. Ah, trows and gnomes are definitely related (I hope you renamed the Drow too, to avoid confusion, especially since drow is an alternative spelling for trow). But they're both Northern European. And so are orcs, btw. So I don't know if you really made it MORE Northern-European, but at least you made it your own. And different. Well though Tolkiens mythos (and its many many derrivatives) are certainly Northern European in origin, I meant more something that didn't sound like the traditional Tolkien Dwarves/Elves/Orcs/Hobbits grouping of races which dominate Fantasy to an insane degree. There are plenty of other fictional races, both extant and within the realms of possibility that don't get used, and much as I may like specific instances of Dwarves/Elves/Orcs, on average I'd rather have a set of new or underused races. With Elves and Orcs particularly, Dwarves to me still are almost always out of the same mold, so if someone did something different or interesting with them I'd be happy to play along. It was my understanding that orcs and goblins were synonyms for the species in Lord of the Rings (or at least some overlap), but Tolkien created the modern use of the word; taking orc from sources like Beowulf as describing an undefined monster of some sort and specifically applying it to his goblins, and it's only later fiction which has turned Goblins and Orcs into seperate species. As for the Drow thing, it didn't come up: I tend to build my entire settings from scratch including the monsters so it wasn't really an issue. Basic gist of this world was that (almost) the entire world was covered by a giant, ancient magic absorbant forest to such a point where it focused like a black hole for magic - if you happened to be (magically)travelling the multiverse in a way that intersected with this plane you'd get sucked in and stuck there, including deities. Two races were native to the world (afforementioned Trow and Wose) and the human, dwarf and elf populations, though the most present were descended from people who'd either got trapped in there, or, in some cases (including the main "villain") had been sent there on purpose as an inescapable prison. Elves were particularly rare as they were magical beings, so the few that did get there basically became amnesic and rarely procreated. Magic was possible, but was only the first few spell levels and required some sort of focus made of wood. Slightly disappointing in that my party ended up being two fighters and a paladin so they didn't really come up against the more interesting magical nuances of the place, but oh well!

The problem with things in general is that in the scandinavian tradition, as I understand it is, pretty much all the words for monsterous humanoids can be used, if not interchangeably, then with a way that has considerable overlap with each other: elves (white, dark and black), dwarves, trolls, brownies, goblins, kobalds, redcaps and so on seem to be fairly vaguely defined in contrast to one another, perhaps more to be gradiations of one thing rather than various different things. One interesting thing to do would be to include various of these, but mix up the expectations of them a little into non-Tolkienesque forms, for instance the elves as the rowdy chaotic and violent ones or trolls as small gentle craftsmen. Obviously you could easily come up with something better than that in a full development schedule, but i think getting elves and dwarves away from expectations of them can only make for a more nuanced world. There is some confusion, I'll give you that, but that's true of all oral traditions. However, you're confusing beings from Norse mythology with beings from Medieval Scandinavian folklore, legendary creatures from other Germanic traditions, and even from Celtic mythology and folklore. Brownies, kobolds, goblins and redcaps have nothing to do with Scandinavia. Only two of the creatures you mentioned are ever really confused in modern interpretations of Norse mythology: the dökkálfar/svartálfar (dark/black elfs) and the dvergar (dwarfs - which were actually not short at all, but as tall as normal men). The dökkálfar are the subterranean cousins of the ljósálfar (light elfs) and are known for their skill as smiths (note that they are not more "evil" than the ljósálfar in any way - dualistic concepts such as good and evil doesn't really exist in Indo-European religions, with the [disputed] exception of zoroastrianism). Dvergar are supposed to reside in Svartálfaheimr, which, as the name would suggest, is the abode of the dark elfs. They too are famous for their smithing, just like in modern fantasy. It is widely believed that the two are in fact just different names for the same people. I didn't specifically mean in the same place as each other, but given the various cultural spread (viking and saxon invasions and whatnot) chances are that a lot of these creatures are related in origin or have at least absorbed some of the aspects of each other. I was going to make some more specific points but unfortunatly my mind has gone blank for the night... But one other one that isn't necessarily related to those but is again a northern European thing is Wose/Green men - had some fun integrating those into a D&D campaign I did a few years ago as a replacement for half-orcs - definitly helped give it a more northern-european tone that just a tolkieneseque one. I may if I remember correctly, have used trow as a substitute for gnomes too, same statistics but different tone of race.

I quite like the old infinity engine explosion mechanics (which get referred to as "chunking" or "gibbles" when playing co-op). It may not be mature, but it's a bit of silly fun when you get a critical hit and blow up someone in a ridiculous way. I'd quite happily stick to that theme, normal sensible deaths for normal attacks, but for a critical, just go over the top with a fountain of non-specific body parts, preferably with that same sound effect as the infinity engine. I don't want graphic or realistic things, just something that really shows that you have utterly pasted that monster...

Part of the issue here is possibly that classes are all about heroic archetypes, but fighter, wizard and rogue in particular are enormously diverse archetypes compared to the others, and in some cases overlap to the point where they could easily contain the others (see: the mentioned barbarian and fighter) As I see it, the key is possibly working out not only what each class is about, but what differentiates themselves from the other classes, and I think they realistically have to be designed with a mandate. In the case of the fighter classes I kind of see it like this: Front line fighters (of any class) have five primary roles in combat, which for conveniance sake I will name some after the MMO terms/terms I vaguely recall from somewhere, even if its a bit unsavoury for some here: Sustained General Damage Dealing Keeping the attention of foes ("agro") Absorbing the brunt of the attacks of foes ("tanking") Taking out specific threats to your team ("blitzing") Controlling the way the battlefield moves Some of those overlap a little but you get the gist. All these guys fill point 1 (tho barbarian generally a little better than the other 4) To me a FIGHTER is basically the generic guy who uses learnt skills and abilities to be a jack of all trades and be fairly good at all of those. You can build it to lean towards one of those purposes or the other but generally speaking, they are the versatile one, not the specialist. Generally belongs on the front line keeping the battle ticking in a stable way. A BARBARIAN is good at getting attention and good at sustained damage and specific targeting, but isn't that great a tank and has no ability to control the battlefield beyond just killing people. Easy to damage but tough to kill. Is generally for mowing down the weakest enemies at speed or trying to deal big damage to single powerful ones, less useful for middle enemies who can outlast their rage and aren't priority targets. A PALADIN is very much about tanking, agro and battlefield control, they certainly aren't bad at damage, but they are more about making the team as a whole stronger through buffs and taking the blows so others don't have to. Belongs right in the middle of things holding your entire team together. A RANGER is about control and specific threats: they often add an extra body to the fight (animal companion where applicable) and also often use ranged attacks and traps to change the battlefield dynamic. They aren't really designed for being a damage sponge like the first 3 others. Belongs at the side of the melee, trying to open up vulnerabilities in the enemy. A MONK is closest to fighter in versatility, but also about control and specific threats tho in a very different way to the ranger, while rangers tend to focus on the whole battlefield through traps, companions and ranged, while monks are about moving around the battlefield to where they are needed most. I kind of see them as a battlefield troubleshooter, rush in, take out a guy/stun him etc and then go off to wherever else he is needed. Of course, you can use them all differently, but these tend to be the standard setups of the classes in standard builds.

I wouldn't consider those to be the "original" elfs. The álfar were twisted into what you described after the christianization of Scandinavia. The álfar actually had, or has, more in common with Tolkien's elves than they do with the pixie-like elfs of Medieval folklore. They are semi-divine beings closely associated with the Vanir (Norse gods of fertility and wisdom, distinct from the Aesir) and are described as more beautiful than any other people. The problem with things in general is that in the scandinavian tradition, as I understand it is, pretty much all the words for monsterous humanoids can be used, if not interchangeably, then with a way that has considerable overlap with each other: elves (white, dark and black), dwarves, trolls, brownies, goblins, kobalds, redcaps and so on seem to be fairly vaguely defined in contrast to one another, perhaps more to be gradiations of one thing rather than various different things. One interesting thing to do would be to include various of these, but mix up the expectations of them a little into non-Tolkienesque forms, for instance the elves as the rowdy chaotic and violent ones or trolls as small gentle craftsmen. Obviously you could easily come up with something better than that in a full development schedule, but i think getting elves and dwarves away from expectations of them can only make for a more nuanced world.

To be honest, D&D elves have a bit of a gap between them and Tolkien's elves, the ones in most fantasy games are just average guys who lean towards, magic, nature etc. The Tolkien ones are much more angelic/mythological with only the arty-naturey thing really in common. I'd actually kind of like to see a return to actual "original" elf mythology a bit, ie. the ones which live in barrows and steal children. Not necessarily just like that as that'd be a fairly impractical as a player race, but I do like the idea of a sentient race with cuckoo-style brooding, perhaps with most elves trying to keep that behind them and mix in with the other races, with a few clans doing it "old style" and still living in mounds and stealing kids, although they'd obviously be increasingly rare and not very popular because of it...