D&D 4E New gamemaster to 4e

I recently got all released fourth edition books as a gift and I have been looking over them and noticed that the essentials classes feel like they came out of 3.5 and the third players handbook feels lackluster overall. Does anyone have houserules/errata that fixes this? I already banned the dragon magazine features since its impossible to find anything. (The books are scans, not actual books) I heard a few rumors about the seeker class being horribly imbalanced and that the warlock has issues, but I also heard that the runepriest is nearly unplayable. Anything else I should know?

tuxedoraptor said:

I recently got all released fourth edition books as a gift and I have been looking over them and noticed that the essentials classes feel like they came out of 3.5 and the third players handbook feels lackluster overall. Does anyone have houserules/errata that fixes this?

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Do you mean other than just not using them, because that works fine, IMHO. Psionics & Monks aren't for every campaign, and the Seeker & Runepriest are pretty odd/specific concepts. I suppose the Seeker was a nod to the 'spellcasting ranger.' The Essentials Classes can be safely ignored, as can the flood of stupid 'align to the classic game' errata, if you can untangle it all.

Things that /are/ salvageable from Essentials include the skill and, especially Skill Challenge, rules from the Rules Compendium, and the MM3-style core monsters reprized in the Monster Vault.

The HotFL/K Essentials Classes are intentionally imbalanced to call back the failing of the classic game - like 5e writ small. The martial classes are designed to be optionless and strictly inferior outside of beatstick DPR; the Mage to power up wizards with OP encounters (1/2 damage tacked onto many of them) to go with already OP dailies, including spells that work automatically no attack/no save, just, push button, stuff happens to the enemy, and with spell preparation that makes them the most versatile class in terms of powers, period; Rangers return to being low-grade casters. Most of the rest of the Essentials classes are meh-to-OK 'simplified' takes on their respective parent classes.

There's a theory that Essentials was intentionally designed to ruin 4e. It's a typical conspiracy theory, but, as they often are, understandable.

I already banned the dragon magazine features since its impossible to find anything. I heard a few rumors about the seeker class being horribly imbalanced and that the warlock has issues, but I also heard that the runepriest is nearly unplayable. Anything else I should know?

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The Seeker is just under-supported because of the Essentials half-ed rev-roll. Same with the Runepriest. Psionic Power brought the psionic classes up to snuff, even if it didn't fix all their issues - they're still too prone to spamming the same augmented power, for instance.

You could run very good games keeping to 'Core' PH1 & 2, only. Divine Power really helps the Paladin, and the Martial Power books add a lot of interest to the Fighter, particularly (the ranger stuff is a tad meh), so 'Power' books can be a good edition. On the DM side, you could do well to tweak MM1 monsters, in particular, using MM3 as your touchstone, definitely has the best monsters.

Some good/common variants include turning inherent bonuses on, so you worry less about magic items, and tossing out the Expertise 'feat taxes' (either completely or giving the bonus for free, depending on how you want your campaign to run at higher levels - it's more consistent with the expertise +3 bonus at epic, but more dynamic without it, turning more on crits, buff & dailies than on damage-grinding).

Tony Vargas said:

Some good/common variants include turning inherent bonuses on, so you worry less about magic items, and tossing out the Expertise 'feat taxes' (either completely or giving the bonus for free, depending on how you want your campaign to run at higher levels - it's more consistent with the expertise +3 bonus at epic, but more dynamic without it, turning more on crits, buff & dailies than on damage-grinding).

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Trying to find the inherent bonuses, brain fart is preventing me from doing so. The only Essentials classes I might allow are the hexblade, the knight,the beserker and the artificer, with some other stuff allowed on a case by case basis as its brought to my attention. I probably won't adjust the monsters since I have dyscalucla (think dyslexia, but with numbers, I can do the math, just not quickly or easily). I have prodded around the players handbook and the power books and I must say that I really like the whole power concept. It feels like a more meaty version of radiance RPG, now if only the balance was as high quality as radiance we would be in buisness. One of my players pointed out a fix for the runepriest: Give wrathful hammers +1 at heroic, +2 at paragon and +3 proficency bonus instead of proficency, then give the actual runepriest proficency in military melee weapons. Also give wrathful hammers access to the craghammer and mordenkrag(spelling is probably wrong). He has a habit of playing either a truenamer/runecaster or a divine healer class. I probably should have seen this coming.

tuxedoraptor said:

Trying to find the inherent bonuses, brain fart is preventing me from doing so. The only Essentials classes I might allow are the hexblade, the knight,the beserker and the artificer, with some other stuff allowed on a case by case basis as its brought to my attention.

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The Berskerker and Artificer aren't Essentials, the Artificer pre-dates it quite a bit, actually. The Berserker & Skald in Heroes of the Feywild are two of the better post-Essentials (sub) classes and well worth allowing, IMHO. Not coincidentally, they're hybrid part-martial sub-classes.

There were no post-Essentials all-martial classes. The Wizard sub-classes (and there was one in every post-essentials book that had sub-classes) were not all wildly OP, but they all added more spells to the wizards' List.
Heroes of the Elemental Chaos didn't have anything quite that good, but some of the themes were pretty cool.

Heroes of Shadow was done more in the Essentials style, except for being changed to hard-bound format, and is pretty terrible.

I probably won't adjust the monsters since I have dyscalucla (think dyslexia, but with numbers, I can do the math, just not quickly or easily).

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Then stick to MM3 & MV as much as possible, and just shun MM1.

I have prodded around the players handbook and the power books and I must say that I really like the whole power concept. It feels like a more meaty version of radiance RPG, now if only the balance was as high quality as radiance we would be in buisness.

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4e is often acknowledged, even by those who hate it, as the best-balanced edition of D&D, by no small margin. Indeed, it's criticized as 'too balanced' or 'giving up too much for balance.' Yet, if you bring in other games for comparison, it's really only modestly well-balanced.

One of my players pointed out a fix for the runepriest: Give wrathful hammers +1 at heroic, +2 at paragon and +3 proficency bonus instead of proficency, then give the actual runepriest proficency in military melee weapons. Also give wrathful hammers access to the craghammer and mordenkrag(spelling is probably wrong). He has a habit of playing either a truenamer/runecaster or a divine healer class. I probably should have seen this coming.

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The Runepriest is undersupported, but not wildly underpowered. If your friend's good with getting the most out of systems, he should be fine without having to change any rules.

Tony Vargas said:

4e is often acknowledged, even by those who hate it, as the best-balanced edition of D&D, by no small margin. Indeed, it's criticized as 'too balanced' or 'giving up too much for balance.' Yet, if you bring in other games for comparison, it's really only modestly well-balanced.

The Runepriest is undersupported, but not wildly underpowered. If your friend's good with getting the most out of systems, he should be fine without having to change any rules.

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Balance in dungeons & dragons is, -for lack of a non controversal analog- not a thing normally, so when we DO get some semblance of balance, it gets blown out of proportion as being too much. when it reality, it was just barely enough to even be considered balanced. (I had an analog of american health care but figured that would just start a flame war, so I dropped it) I really wish a company or a person would buy 4e from wizards of the coast and give it the paizo treatment. The player has no problem with underpowered things, he just feels that something wasn't right with the runepriest. He also swapped thievery with dungeoneering. He currently is working on a feat for the class as well. Also I will probably use one or two things from the first monster manual mainly since orcus is in it and that saves me the time of making a big evil villian that isn't cliche, that and punching gods in the face is satisfying for most players.

tuxedoraptor said:

I recently got all released fourth edition books as a gift and I have been looking over them and noticed that the essentials classes feel like they came out of 3.5 and the third players handbook feels lackluster overall. Does anyone have houserules/errata that fixes this? I already banned the dragon magazine features since its impossible to find anything. (The books are scans, not actual books) I heard a few rumors about the seeker class being horribly imbalanced and that the warlock has issues, but I also heard that the runepriest is nearly unplayable. Anything else I should know?

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On the whole, your fears are unfounded.

Everything works fine. There's little to no reason to ban anything - aside from worldbuilding considerations (i.e. no elves in this world, no [arcane] classes in this campaign, etc.)

Here is a numerical example of what I mean. Assume power levels go from 1 to 10.
3rd edition: Fighter 1 // Wizard 10

4th edition: Anything you'll see referred as weak 7.4 // Anything you'll see as strong 8.9

Of course, I've pulled these numbers from thin air, and mean nothing disparaging about 3rd edition. The point is that "unplayably weak" in 4e simply means, "not quite as strong as some others".

To start out, my advice is this :
TRUST THE SYSTEM, IT WORKS. YOU DON'T NEED TO WORRY.

MoutonRustique said:

Of course, I've pulled these numbers from thin air, and mean nothing disparaging about 3rd edition. The point is that "unplayably weak" in 4e simply means, "not quite as strong as some others".

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To put it in 3.5 terms, a few under-supported classes (Runepriest, et al) are arguably Tier 4, the rest are Tier 3. The post-Essentials Wizard could be considered overpowered (the wizard was a premier controller, and arguably the most versatile class in the game, before Essentials), but even then, it's more like the top of Tier 3 than Tier 2 the way the 3.x Sorcerer was Tier 2.

The 'crimes' of Essentials are as much in the form of needless inconsistency as actual imbalance, though they are imbalanced by 4e stanadards (and, I suppose, probably 'too balanced' by other D&D standards).

...and, it is, indeed, a very easy system to run (again, by D&D standards), if you just use the guidelines and have players that aren't going out of there way to make your life difficult...

...that said, the player side of the game was more consistent, so probably easier to take in and run for, prior to PH3 & Essentials.

MoutonRustique said:

On the whole, your fears are unfounded.

Everything works fine. There's little to no reason to ban anything - aside from worldbuilding considerations (i.e. no elves in this world, no [arcane] classes in this campaign, etc.)

Here is a numerical example of what I mean. Assume power levels go from 1 to 10.
3rd edition: Fighter 1 // Wizard 10

4th edition: Anything you'll see referred as weak 7.4 // Anything you'll see as strong 8.9

Of course, I've pulled these numbers from thin air, and mean nothing disparaging about 3rd edition. The point is that "unplayably weak" in 4e simply means, "not quite as strong as some others".

To start out, my advice is this :
TRUST THE SYSTEM, IT WORKS. YOU DON'T NEED TO WORRY.

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We are running a session tonight, we have a half orc rogue who can only be described as crankily optimistic, a goliath runepriest who forgets that he is a goliath and just assumes that everyone can do what he does (meaning when a halfling is trying to escape from a locked prison cell, he ends up giving the advice of: "rip the bars off, obviously." in the tone of someone trying to explain a delicate matter to a toddler) The last player is undecided, but he likes the warlock and thinks the binder has really cool flavor. I told him that the binder was rather crummy but he kind of wants to try it anyway just for the sheer flavor of being the one that can make the rogue question his motives.

tuxedoraptor said:

We are running a session tonight, we have a half orc rogue who can only be described as crankily optimistic, a goliath runepriest who forgets that he is a goliath and just assumes that everyone can do what he does (meaning when a halfling is trying to escape from a locked prison cell, he ends up giving the advice of: "rip the bars off, obviously." in the tone of someone trying to explain a delicate matter to a toddler) The last player is undecided, but he likes the warlock and thinks the binder has really cool flavor. I told him that the binder was rather crummy but he kind of wants to try it anyway just for the sheer flavor of being the one that can make the rogue question his motives.

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I will offer this piece of advice - especially considering you're running a smaller group : make use of minions, and when it's appropriate, have the foes arrive in waves or intervals.

Personally, I count a foe that arrives 3 rounds "late" to be worth ~50% when building the encounters. The great thing about waves : if it's not going to plan, the players need never know it didn't!

There are a million ways to tweak the system to make it produce the play experience you want - but, at first, just play the game, you'll soon see what you'd like to change/improve. The forums will always be more than happy to give advice or a million-and-two houserules and tweaks.

I have run for this group many times with other systems, they know eachothers tactics pretty well and are more than capable of taking on foes fit for larger parties via strategic use of terrain, NPC helpers and items. You would be surprised at how effective three player characters can be when they have phil, steve and gus-the three local guardsmen who REALLY want that promotion to senior guardsmen. They aren't skilled, they are in way too deep, but by the powers above, they are going to slay this goddamn necromancer and get a raise! These three actually became famous character names after an incident involving a cult of a demon lord and the intervention of -word for word- the mothering paladin. Very fun story behind that character.