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Yesterday afternoon, Penny and I hit the bookstore. We wandered around for a while, unable to find anything that we were actually looking for. Silly bookstore. They had the first book in a series I was looking for, but I was looking for the second one (have already read the first), and it wasn’t in wonderful condition anyways – pages on both copies they had were all fanned out like they’d been exposed to more humidity than Arizona typically offers…

Anyhow. Bumped into the Warcraft RPG book while I was wandering. I’d actually gone to another store seeking it to examine a few weeks ago, but it wasn’t there. I figured I’d pick it up, since I don’t actually have any 3.5 resources.

Interesting things it says about possibilities in the game. Of course, the teams in charge of development of the two products aren’t the same, and there are always going to be things that one can do in pen & paper games but not on computers.

Interesting point number one. The game lists necromancers as a valid player class – alongside mages and warlocks. It also gives mages summons (just like in the RTS games).

Now, despite this, I can still understand if the WoW team has serious issues with letting players lead armies of undead into combat. Primarily that the Scourge probably don’t much appreciate the idea, and that neither horde or alliance is really keen on the notion either – though how they allow warlocks in their midst, I’ll never know.

Interesting point number two. In addition to necromancers and the 9 current WoW classes, the book also gives rules for scouts, tinkers, and barbarrians.

Tinkers are pretty much covered by the engineering profession, so the odds of them showing up as an independant class are currently pretty nil. If goblins (which are playable in the tabletop rpg) were to become playable online, I could almost see them somehow making an adaptation of the tinker class for gnomes and goblins to play with that augmented normal engineering.

Scouts are… well, they’re D&D rangers w/o the spellcasting abilities. They come off as a cross between rogues and hunters with a specialization in first aid and glowy hunting. And, aside from gaining immunity to organic poisons at lvl 9 and being able to wind walk at lvl 20 (and remember, this is d20, so that’s max level), they don’t really have enough to them to make them distinct enough from hunters in the game. Though… they can use shields. Grumble.

Barbarrians are the traditional D&D class w/o any modification that I can tell.

Point number the third. They list an interesting assortment of prestige classes – read hero classes. I’m not up on my standard issue d20 prestige classes, so I don’t know how many of them are just copies of the default ones. I am guessing not too many, but shrug. Anyhow, here’s a list of the goodies, along with abilities they have that aren’t necessarily possessed by the standard WoW classes they would evolve from.

Archmage of Kirin Tor – Spell reflection. Alter damage type of nukes. Alter AoE shape of spell. Occasional free casting of a spell.
Assassin – Death attack (studied hit has chance of killing foe outright). Hide in plain sight.
Beastmaster – De-aggrify critters. Charm animal spell. Natural weapon (grow permanent claws/fangs/horns).
Berserker – Ability to instantly generate rage? Longer range when charging. Wield 2h weapon in one hand. Serious amounts of AoE melee damage
Duelist – Serious dodging and saving throws when unarmoured. Int gives a bonus to AC. Improved hit/crit chance while wielding a single light 1h weapon. Charge during combat? Improved parry. Deflect arrows.
Elven Ranger – Improved range with bows/xbows. Favored enemy (as D&D ranger). Improved tracking? Improved cooldown? Double crit with arrows. Arrows that pass through and hit multiple enemies. D&D ranger spells. Use bow as a melee weapon
Fel-Sworn – Demon subtype – not humanoid. Fire breath. Fangs, talons, wings, horns, tail. Increased size. Natural armour.
Gladiator – Aura of morale to party. Increased damage with 2h weapons. Improved crits. Ability to maximize damage. Lots of weapon specialization stuff.
Infiltrator – Int applies a bonus to parry. Lots of class-specific quest opportunities? Disguise (read: orb of deception). Lots of aggro avoidance when dealing with intelligent humanoids. Resistance to mind control. Mind control. Hide in plain sight. More dodging stuff.
Mounted Warrior – Fighting while mounted, duh. Reduced damage for riding over stupid terrain. Shock charge.

Fourth interesting thing. Tinker-made vehicles. Odds that they’d allow players to build shredders? Probably about -5%. But… if they do ever allow mounted combat, I can see them allowing for special combat-ready mounts… and for engineering versions of them.

Fifth, and final thing I’m gonna mention from my cursory reading. Lots of references to inter-faction togetherness. They give examples of times that Alliance and Horde chars might wind up partied together. There’s also mention of an elf becoming a shaman. Of course, a lot of that is just tabletop rpg fluff, but shrug. The seeds are there.