Recently, I said this:
The items are also neat, though I’m starting to be bothered by 4th Edition’s insistence on adding more and more item slots. First it was tattoos, then divine gifts, and now primordial shards and elemental gifts. Characters weren’t complex enough, but now they can have up to three invisible magic items that take up no slots.
In general, I’m against power creep in cooperative games. I don’t like the idea that players need to keep buying books to maintain pace with improving monsters and other players, though it’s something that 4th Edition loves. First, PHB2 came out with backgrounds (a +2 bonus to one skill or the ability to gain a skill not in your class, with no drawback). It also set the standard that all classes will have one primary stat rather than two, so that all characters of that class can get the best options rather than design characters that feel and act different. Then new items started coming out in Adventurer’s Vault 2 and later books. Essentials improved basic feats by buffing Lightning Reflexes at all and adding the Expertise feats that are objectively better that the original Weapon Expertise (a feat that didn’t exist either in PHB1). This isn’t even looking at the idea that newer classes are stronger than older classes, like the fact that the PHB2 sorcerer gets lower bonus damage than the HotEC sorcerer.
So it’s somewhat weird that I actually like themes. Themes usually give a character bonuses without drawbacks and don’t prevent that character from taking anything else. It’s just more powers and abilities stapled onto any character.
But something about themes feels different. Maybe it’s because they add a balance between flavor (which backgrounds do well, but classes and paragon paths usually do poorly) and mechanics (vice versa). Maybe it’s because they give a tangible change to the feel of a character. Maybe it’s because they stop at 10th level, giving players some configuration before they qualify for the most exciting options. But it’s probably a combination of everything, in that it’s break from 4th Edition’s tightly-controlled, cookie-cutter character design aesthetic.
When 3rd Edition still existed, prestige classes were my favorite thing. I went through new books looking at the prestige classes, learning their flavor and abilities, memorizing their prerequisites, and trying to figure out how to work them into my campaigns or characters. For Pathfinder, that role is filled by archetypes, which I consider an improvement. 4th Edition didn’t have anything that excited me in the same way until themes, and now I’m thrilled to see new ones in each book.
It’s deeply disappointing that themes were first published roughly one month before Wizards brought back Monte Cook, which is when the talk of D&D 5th Edition began. Most of 4th Edition’s life didn’t have them, and they certainly haven’t made it to every book since; I think they’re only in the Neverwinter Campaign Setting, the Dark Sun Campaign Setting, the Book of Vile Darkness, and Heroes of the Elemental Chaos. These four books have 38 themes, which is a great number (compare to 26 classes), but more than half of them are in campaign settings, so they’re pretty easy to miss.
I’m optimistic for the future of themes over whatever time 4th Edition has left, and even more so for the possibility of creating custom themes for characters and campaign settings. In a sense, I like the idea of bundling them with a background, so that a character with a maritime background has a theme that accentuates their life at sea. It’s a great way to make characters that feel and act different instead of just looking different, and it finally gives players a way to bring character background into at-the-table mechanics.