Thank You

We had a near miss with the Witch Doctor. As it was approaching completion, the preview content for the PHB2 came out, and it turned out that one of the WD Paragon Paths (the Totem Caller) bore a great deal of resemblance to the new Shaman class. It’s a kind of validating problem to have, but all the same it meant that we had to scratch that path and put in a new one. It wasn’t a big deal, but I admit I’m really glad for the preview content, since I think I would have been mortified with that kind of overlap.

That’s probably the most iconic example of how outside forces ended up steering this project, starting from its roots as a weird Polynesian/Viking/World of Warcraft Troll mashup and ending with that last-minute fix. But while it is easy to point to those individual things and the impact they had, they fall far short of the total impact of all the fantastic feedback we got from people on the original Witch Doctor class preview. I think you’re going to find that we listened very closely, and a lot of things that were unclear or worked poorly have been smoothed over and swapped out, and the class is infinitely better for it, and you have my thanks.

You also have my apologies – at least some of you are already playing Witch Doctors, and some of these changes are pretty drastic. Drastic enough that you may need to rebuild from scratch. I feel bad about that, but I am confident that your newly tuned Witch Doctor will have new tricks that should very much be worth the effort of making thechange.

This is, ultimately, one of the strengths and weaknesses of being a small company – we could have stuck with the Witch Doctor as we first presented it, maybe tweaked it a little, and it would have been pretty good and we would have looked more ‘professional’ because hey, we got it right the first time! Changing it is a bit more risky. That we were able and willing to look at the feedback and make changes is something that excites me, but it also risk alienating people who were kind enough to invest themselves in the original version. I think it makes for a better product, but I have no real sense of who’s going to be annoyed by the changes.

So we roll the dice and take our chances.

However that roll turns out, I just want to reiterate my thanks for the feedback, discussion and comments I’ve received about the Witch Doctor. It’s been a great process, and I’m proud of what we made.

1. Cam Banks, March 2, 2009:

   It’s hard enough designing new classes for 4E (I’m currently working on several all at once for another project), let alone trying to avoid reinventing WotC’s wheel. I commend you on such a flavorful and awesome piece of work, and now I want to use this in my own games, too. Which I think is the point!