4E PLANESCAPE FACTIONS UPDATES

I did try to contact you several times about the abilities, and while I did publish it without your promition (scummy enough), but I that would put your name down. It turns out that I actually forgot your name, or it wasn't listed anymore, so I either couldn't or didn't (rather pathetic). So, to make this better, we can do one of two things:

I can edit the post to add your name on the article (citing which parts of the article you made), and if you can give me some links, post your other material. Or, I can delete the page, give you back the material, include my material if you want it (except for the Cyclers and Mercenaries, they belong to someone else) as well as any other material I created not already taken by the Planewalker community so that you can post it under your name.

Hello there. Your work is quite remarkable and I think that these faction themes are quite balanced. I'm going to start a Planescape campaign and I need to have some faction material, since they're the theme-center of the campaign. Is this compilation the old one?

http://www.scribd.com/doc/8972149/Planescape-Factions-4e

If it is, I think I'll just use the pdfs, since they look absolutely great. I'll translate them to Spanish and use them for my players.

Thanks again for your outstanding work!

If you can give me a template so I can edit it, I would be glad to translate it. My players would be very thankful if they don't need me to explain them all the features they can get with the factions they pick. Just a question: the Faction Gifts are a new list of powers or are there aditional benefits that the characters can gain by raising levels?

Thanks and keep up with the good work!

I'll slowly look over each Faction theme over the days.

First thing is it could be argued either way whether or not there needs to be another power source called belief. It's justifiable if there's feats or paragon paths that specifically use belief in general, but also they could just justifiably be things like Athar (divine) and Bleakers (psionic). I'm reserving judgment on that since it's kind of uncertain how things are right now.

Anyways the first one I looked over was the Bleakers.

My comments are:
-I think there should be some bonus to defense or saves against daze or dominated conditions, or bonus to will, or psychic damage resistance via a feat or one of their theme powers because I remember Bleakers had something like a bonus against insanity because they were already insane to paraphrase the Factols Manifesto.

-Maybe Incorporate Madness you should get a bonus against the condition when you transfer it yourself. Just to make it more appealing to use.

-The feat Melancholy Step, maybe the teleport distance should be defined to something like 2 squares, since if it's "your speed" that might make it too strong, even if it's only move actions this round.

-Manic Depressive might need to be simplified a bit.

-Overall the powers and paragon paths are balanced.

In regards to Gift of Free Will I think it should get a more varied progression with more steps, rather than just +2 and +5.

For Guvners...

-I don't think any theme should get a secondary role of hybrid. It seems like the tried and true formula is that while full classes can get dual power sources, they don't get hybrid roles. Anyways Guvners are most likely controllers. I know you put a lot of damage on some of their powers, so maybe the damage should be scaled down, and the effects be more on control effects.

-Like for example Shield of Rules, maybe reduce the die to d4 or d6, but have that secondary effect automatically apply.

-Escape Trick Loophole should be to end of next turn with Sustain Standard, and special "you may do this for 2 more rounds"

-Assemble Pattern could probably also be a Xaositect Gift, but it would go under a different name like "I Found This".

-Fast Loophole, I think it needs to be defined that you pay the ritual cost still. Also I think it should probably only apply to a particular ritual or rituals only of a certain level, given that it's a paragon feat. And does it need to be a ritual you've mastered?

The Doomguard while I'm at it.

-Unstoppable Decline is quite beyond the power of all Encounter Attacks. It should probably be something lesser, like not require a healing surge, add that radiant and necrotic damage to the attack, and have that penalty to defenses to the end of next turn, and maybe something else like target grants combat advantage or gains vulnerability to the end of next turn.

-Entropic Acceleration (feat, which maybe it should be renamed since there already is the power), what's the target? Is it the entropic blow target?

-Doom Rewards needs another description

-Sift could be a utility power or a ritual that any Sinker can learn instead, it's kind of a big thing about being a Sinker.

-Entropic Champion, I feel it should get it's own unique power instead of a wizard daily power, something like a high damage large close burst power, with some slight differences depending blade type. And what should be made clear is that having a particular blade means you have the corresponding encounter power.

-It should be noted that the Voidsoul Genasi gets resistance to psychic damage, so you could associate vacuum with psychic damage.

Even though I find it hard to fit any of the Factions to the Primal Power Source (except for the obvious Verdant Guild Sect) I'm curious what your reasons might be. It's probably a good thing because otherwise there wouldn't be too many linked to Primal Power.

Anyways with the Indeps:
-Insult Philosophers, what are you making the check against?
-Word of Independence, this suffers from being an encounter power which generally has to the "end of next turn" rather than save ends, but it's also a non-weapon non-implement power without a scaling plus either. So it's sort of a moot point when the power won't hit as much.

Merckillers:
-Even though half the powers here all revolve around Lawbreaker's Doom, it's too powerful of an ability. It's stronger than most of the other faction powers I've seen, and basically can turn a "secondary" role into a primary one, and it lasts for an entire encounter and can be renewed. The Gladiator and Primal Guardian themes which are of the same secondary role, have nothing to match that. And it's even a better mark in a lot of cases from that of other defender classes, being more effective than similar single target marks such as Aegis, Divine Challenge and Battlemind's Demand, and almost being too much like an Avenger's Oath, as it's sort of strikerish with the extra damage and the slow effect that's anytime in the entire encounter.
So I think this down should be toned down quite a lot, and the powers dependant on Lawbreaker's Doom should maybe be more dependant on any mark.
-Unit Tactics might need to be slightly higher than 3rd level for a gift.
-Also Bloody Capture cancels out many offensive abilities of creatures with it's cancelling teleports. A creature under this should still be able to use teleports offensively.

My thoughts on Lawbreaker's Doom, is that Lawbreaker's Doom can remain as a condition with no lingering effects, but the mark only lasts till next turn and the slowed and extra damage only happens for the triggering attack.

I've had some time to look at the Ciphers.

-So just to clarify, all the powers that have the requirement of Your Initiative Being Higher than all non-Ciphers means you can use it any time during the encounter?
-Well this does have a lot of problems of things that can't be used half of the time, because even if you have a really high initiative and took Improved Initiative like all Ciphers should, you still can roll 1's for Initiative. Anyways gaining extra action points easily might unbalance things, you could easily get 3 extra depending on how you started out in initiative.
-Action Without Thought may be fine as the only encounter power to gain extra action points as it has a cost of losing a healing surge, that not everyone wants to spend often. Cipher Strike though on top of Action Without Thought starts to lead to a ridiculous amount of action points gained.
-I think it would be better thematically if Ciphers had more powers that were immediate or opportunity actions.
-Extra Cipher Action should be taken only once.
-For the gifts that don't allow you to delay or ready actions, even though I know that delaying or readying aren't very Cipherish things to do on the surface, they do cut out sometimes very important tactical actions (such as trying to coordinate a flank). And I think in many cases Cipher masters would know when to act instinctively at the right moment, hence being able to ready actions.

There's a reason that action points are limited in 4e, it's due to certain game theories such as Economy of Actions and not having one player take up way more time than the others effectively outshining the others. It also leads to easily being able to "nova" which is using all your top powers really quickly, since those action points can be used do encounter and daily powers, with effectively 2 actions to do so because there's so many action points. It's a lot like the reason why back in 3e haste was nerfed.

An alternative would be to have certain powers work like the Battlemind's Lightning Rush the one where a move and attack is made as an immediate reaction, standard action can't be used on your turn unless it's augmented, because it's a very in the moment type ability.

For the Sensates.

-Sense Link, does this allow Line of Effect from that square, or using powers from there? I think it should be clarified.
-Dramatic Story, might be too dramatically powerful, but I haven't really tracked where the stun effects are at which levels.
-Energy Acceptance, is there a reason why it's limited to cold, fire, lightning or thunder? It doesn't have to be all damage types either.
-Aura Reading Gift, what's the difference for the different levels of the ability?
-Death Holds No Mysteries, what exactly can do you with that action point after making a successful death saving throw and not being healed but just stabilized?

Now while these themes were based on the Dark Sun themes which were the only we had to go by until recently. Do you think the newer format for themes, (with only optional utility powers and a feature at 5th and 10th level) fits different factions better?

While I don't know how you can reconcile the balance between the Dark Sun Theme types and the "essentials" themes yet, certainly designing the later is easier to do, as we don't have to try to shoehorn a bunch of attack powers (I'd still leave some optional attack powers in, if they're appropriate) to a faction.

::raise dead!::

How many folks are using these, and what's your experience so far? I'm just starting a 4e Planescape campaign, and I'm curious what's worked for people.

For now, I plan to use the simpler Benefits/Restrictions list from here -- /081105/4e-planscape-the-factions -- but I'd like to hear what others have tried and had work?

Will do. Should be starting in December, and I'll put these into play pretty much right from the start.

I'm guessing the PDFs from the first post contains the most current updates, don't they?

Unfortunately, I don't. Coincidentally, my players ended picking up factions covered here, and personally I'm not very good at creating content, what's a shame, I think.