D&D 4E Core 4E vs. Essentials

Xeviat · Sep 24, 2017

I actually liked the idea behind Essentials. For the Fighter and Rogue, trading Daily powers for static bonuses, and trading varied encounters for something simple, could have worked. Getting a striker Fighter, a controller ranger, and a leader Druid was nice too. But, I also liked the Psion and power point classes.

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AbdulAlhazred · Sep 24, 2017

Fox Lee said:
Even if the Essentials material was mechanically excellent (it's not), I would still like it less because of classes like the Blackguard. To me, these are a betrayal of the core 4e ideal that your character's motivations and identity belong to you. I mean, alignment restrictions rearing their ugly heads again? In my 4e? To me, that is a serious backslide into the needless, creativity-stifling restrictions that made earlier D&D editions so much less fun.

Eh, I never was into arbitary restrictions, for sure, but with Blackguard it seems like more of a "well, how would you be good and have this as your class?" I mean, it seems like less of a "we're just going to impose our ideas on you" sort of restriction and more of a "you probably can't mix these elements in one character successfully" thing. I'd note that 4e actually never talks about changing alignment (that I can recall, maybe I missed it). So it seems rather up to the GM what happens when my Blackguard starts acting Good... I mean, certainly by RAW it won't have any effect, mechanically!

Fox Lee · Sep 24, 2017

AbdulAlhazred said:
Eh, I never was into arbitary restrictions, for sure, but with Blackguard it seems like more of a "well, how would you be good and have this as your class?" I mean, it seems like less of a "we're just going to impose our ideas on you" sort of restriction and more of a "you probably can't mix these elements in one character successfully" thing.

That point is, that should be up to the players to decide. What mandates "evil" about the Blackguard is entirely fluff - "domination", "fury" - and not what the powers or abilities actually do. And lest we forget, the fluff is something we're supposed to be able to change at will. The mechanics could be used to express plenty of concepts that aren't inherently evil.

As it so happens, I am playing a good-aligned Blackguard right now - lawful good, actually (technically a rewritten Blackguard called the Vindicator, because I found the Blackguard fluff insufferably edgelordy, but the mechanics are 90% the same). The basic premise is "noble monster" - she recognises a sinister urge within herself, and uses the strictures of her religion, and a self-imposed adherence to structure and routine, as a way to bend it to a noble purpose.

I'd note that 4e actually never talks about changing alignment (that I can recall, maybe I missed it). So it seems rather up to the GM what happens when my Blackguard starts acting Good... I mean, certainly by RAW it won't have any effect, mechanically!

Maybe not, but a vague and unspecified penalty/restriction, based on fluff logic, is as much a contradiction of 4e Core values either way.

thanson02 · Sep 25, 2017

AbdulAlhazred said:
Eh, I never was into arbitary restrictions, for sure, but with Blackguard it seems like more of a "well, how would you be good and have this as your class?" I mean, it seems like less of a "we're just going to impose our ideas on you" sort of restriction and more of a "you probably can't mix these elements in one character successfully" thing. I'd note that 4e actually never talks about changing alignment (that I can recall, maybe I missed it). So it seems rather up to the GM what happens when my Blackguard starts acting Good... I mean, certainly by RAW it won't have any effect, mechanically!

4E was the first edition where they disconnected game mechanics with alignment requirements (one it's many strengths, mind you

). As for the Blackguard subclass, I thought it was a cool idea but I thought it was a bit redundant, especially with the Ardent Build for the Paladin in Divine Power. If you look at them, conceptually they're the same thing.

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thanson02 · Sep 25, 2017

Fox Lee said:
As it so happens, I am playing a good-aligned Blackguard right now - lawful good, actually (technically a rewritten Blackguard called the Vindicator, because I found the Blackguard fluff insufferably edgelordy, but the mechanics are 90% the same). The basic premise is "noble monster" - she recognises a sinister urge within herself, and uses the strictures of her religion, and a self-imposed adherence to structure and routine, as a way to bend it to a noble purpose.

I love that character concept! Very cool!

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Zeromaru X · Sep 25, 2017

Late to the party, but... you already had discussed most of the stuff I also think about the Vanilla 4e-Essentials conundrum, so my two cents.

I do like what Essentials did to the races, giving them more flexibility. I liked that you had a fixed +2, and the other +2 you can chose between other two abilities. It gave you more freedom to use races, less mechanically tying them to specific classes. I know this started in the PHB 3 (or in the DSCS), but Essentials standardized it to the common races of the PHBs.

However, I never liked what they did with the Essentials humans, giving them an "Heroic Effort", like if only humans were the only race capable of heroic stuff. I never use nor allow the Essentials humans in my campaigns.

Another stuff I really like of Essentials is the fluff. 4e core books really lacked that. I do like the Nentir Vale setting and all its lore (I'm sure many here already know that,

). And the Essentials books gave us a lot of fluff for the core races of this setting, making them something unique if you compared them with their equivalents in other settings.

But that is all I like about Essentials. For the rest, I always stick to Core.