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Playtest Group of the Month
(May)

Playtesters at Work:

5/12/00:

From the playtest draft and revisions:

The standard arms and armor package listed for the monk class included a staff in the original draft. A revision to the draft changed this, dropping the staff in favor of a spear. Ian noted that, regardless of the game mechanics that give staffs lesser advantages over spears in lieu of a monk’s open-hand attacks, the generic vision of a monk is not generally that of a spear-carrier. Only a monk-a-phile could be so picky!

From the revised rules:

The standard equipment package for a monk once again includes the trusty staff.

5/5/00:

This question was posed in one of the surveys sent out to playtest groups:

Are there any classes that seem obviously better than the others?

The answer from Ian:

"Monks and paladins."

The follow-up question:

Why?

The follow-up answer from Ian:

"Purely because of the number of class abilities they gain. Although not unbalancing in itself, I’d like to see something in place that makes these two classes harder pick up than the others. Some restriction on multiclassing with these two may do the trick (eg, disallowing them for multiclassing, or forcing a level freeze—you can play a monk or paladin, but if you opt to multiclass, you cannot gain any further levels as a monk or paladin; and you may play any class, but if you choose to multiclass in either monk or paladin, you may no longer gain levels in the old class(es)).

"Just something not to take any of their power away (because I don’t think the powers they have are unbalancing—just over and above any gained by other classes, if that makes sense), but just to make people think twice about playing them."

 From the revised rules:

The final design draft of the Player’s Handbook contains this paragraph, in the paladin class description:

"Like a member of any other class, a paladin may be a multiclass character, but paladins face a special restriction. A paladin who gains a new class or (if already multiclass) raises another class by a level may never again raise her paladin level, though she retains all her paladin abilities."

The same paragraph appears in the description of the monk class (with the word "paladin" replaced by "monk," of course).