Dear Unregistered! We notice you don't currently have a silver subscription here on EN World. We'd love to encourage you to give it a try, so we've made this coupon for $5 off your first 4-month Silver Subscription. Simply go to the subscription page and enter coupon code SILVER. With that subscription you get access to TWO adventure paths, which between them cover D&D 3.5, Pathfinder, and D&D 4th Edition - War of the Burning Sky (which has been completed) and ZEITGEIST: The Gears of Revolution (which is currently ongoing). You also get a whole bunch of site perks and features here on EN World, including access to the Search function, images and links in your forum signature, a larger PM box, give out more XP at a time, and more. Please give a try; we're proud of our adventure paths, and we're sure you'll love them both!
General RPG DiscussionFor discussion of RPG topics in general, GM/player issues, and topics which don't belong in a specific game forum below.
All the latest EN World
official reviews, columns, and subscriber articles here.
Don't have your subscription yet? It's only $3 a month and you can grab
it right
here!
Not sure if this is behind the d&di wall but I think everyone (regardless of edition preference) will be interested in this.
Here is a bullet point summary:
*Developers say that experience with system has made it, "clear that we could produce classes with different rates of class feature and power acquisition without harming the game."
*Clear that players like, "having classes that were new, different, and interesting."
*Inspired by experiment with power points and removing encounter powers in PH3
*Essentials: "introduce(s) greater differences of complexity between classes while also creating options that (will) interest veterans of the game."
*Developers have eliminated daily powers in Essentials version of some classes and simplified many encounter mechanics.
*Essentials classes are "sub-classes" of existing classes reminiscent of those in previous editions. New classes have different mechanics from existing classes.
*Using Essentials version of class will be optional. Original builds will continue to work the same. No changes to pre-existing class builds except one: wizards' encounter-level spells now have a miss effect.
*Essentials races will have "more options."
So this looks pretty big. They apparently heard people complaining about the lack of difference between classes and are going to be producing classes with a variety of mechanics, some simple and some more complex. It looks like some classes will have versions that have no dailies. This might make some of the martial classes more like the Book of 9 Swords classes.
Originally we thought these would simply be new builds for the classes that work with existing mechanics (like the tempest fighter or the vestige warlock). Instead it looks like whole new class FORMS are going to be introduced.
I expect we'll see the dual primary stat classes (paladin and warlock, for example) given single primary-stat builds with very different mechanics. Depending on what is introduce this could could lead to the de facto death of the "original" versions of some class, as people switch en masse to the new implementation. It wouldn't just be a new option; it would be a fix. For other classes, it might just be an interesting chocie to make at character creation.
As a side note, there are previews for the essentials classes coming up each Friday in July. One of the previews is for the, "Knight," which I assume is a sub-class of the Fighter.
This point bears repeating—Aside from rules updates and changes to one category of wizard spells, the character you are playing today does not change in any major way. It was crucial to us that someone playing a dwarf fighter today didn’t need to rebuild that character once the Essentials products were released.
__________________ "If it has stats, we can kill it." - T.G. Jackson, intro to 3rd ed Hackmaster
Hmm. Interesting developments, if true. With these changes will the old rules be phased out with replacement books that use the new rules?
Before this becomes some internet meme it's worth emphasizing heavily this is not what is happening.
Copied from the article and pretty relevant to this:
Quote:
We decided to embrace something similar to the old sub-class concept from bygone editions. The classes presented in Essentials are different takes on existing classes, ones that share a similar place in the Dungeons & Dragons world but that use different mechanics. By embracing this approach, we could produce a “new” fighter with new mechanics without having to change the existing fighter class. After all, plenty of people already play and enjoy the current fighter. Why mess with that?
So these are not "Phasing out" the old rules, they are a different interpretation of those rules. Possibly with a bend to being a bit simpler for new players perhaps? I'm not entirely sure.
Either way, we are getting previews of some of the new essentials classes in Dragon this month. We'll be able to have a look at what they mean then.
I noted in my original post that the sub-classes will be optional and that the original class mechanics for the classes presented are still usable.
I'm guessing that players of some of the clunkier classes (warlock, cleric, paladin) will jump at the chance to convert over to a more effective sub-class. For them, this will be a fix.
Looking at this to what it brings to the game now, it only appears to be a positive development. A box with all your tokens and all your grids and all your rules? New and interesting class mechanics?
Yes, please!
With everything they say, I keep thinking that the Essentials line should have been what 4e was in the first place.
It also sounds a lot like a 4.5e, in a lot of ways (new fighters! additive changes!) but not in others (they don't want you to have to re-make your character).
I'm excited, though. They've got a good chance to mend some of the issues that 4e has faced so far with this line. It's still vague, but I'm liking what I'm hearing, and I look forward to seeing a fighter who plays like a fighter, without the straightjacket of the Vancian powers system.
This looks like big changes to me... and even though I think 4e is a great system as is, I am kinda impressed that they are willing to make changes now (how many 4.5's will we be able to see now) AND still make sure the original forms work. This sounds to me like a good-ole-fashioned AD&D/BECMI dichotomy! I like the concept... colour me optimistic.
So, am I the only one that liked uniform mechanics such every class having the at-will/encounter/daily system?
Because I really didn't like power points, and I hated that they shoehorned them back in.
No, you're not. Yet to me it became clear early on that the way classes are constructed, with a big part of the rules folded into the Powers, would lead to mechanical variations.
Seems like 3.5e's jungle of prestige classes is replaced by a similar jungle of classes, class variations, sub-classes, and what not.
Before this becomes some internet meme it's worth emphasizing heavily this is not what is happening.
Heh - it's funny how they say it, and then repeat it, and then finish with an example of how it's not that. It's almost like they've gotten used to the idea of people completely misreporting stuff on the intrawebs!
Heh - it's funny how they say it, and then repeat it, and then finish with an example of how it's not that. It's almost like they've gotten used to the idea of people completely misreporting stuff on the intrawebs!
Yeah, what they're doing is still pretty different though and pretty confusing as well. Emphasizing that they are not making older material irrelevant is very important.
I don't mind them mixing up mechanics now and I actually think it's a good idea. So long as they have learned the mistakes they made when they created the psionic classes we might be in for some neat new ideas.
*Developers have eliminated daily powers in Essentials version of some classes and simplified many encounter mechanics.
Dang. I was really hoping this wasn't going to be 4.5.
I get that they're really, stridently insisting that this isn't the case. But changing the rules for PHB classes was arguably the most significant "this isn't compatible" change from 3.0 to 3.5. Even if there were plenty of people who kept playing their 3.0 rangers under the new ruleset.
Recent News
Linear Mode
