D&D 4E Core 4E vs. Essentials

[Obryn]

You're right, that was a total brain fart on my part.

My distaste for themes is based on things already mentioned: Another package of doohickeys for new players, one more axis of optimization for veterans, and no clear necessity to bring them in.

Got it. And I think that's a danger, depending on how integrated they are into the world.

My last 2 4e games - lasting 6-7 years or so - have used the Dark Sun themes, and the Zeitgeist themes. And both are well-integrated into the setting lore, and really serve to flesh out the characters. So I've seen firsthand how they can be done just right.

 

[MoutonRustique]

Got it. And I think that's a danger, depending on how integrated they are into the world.

My last 2 4e games - lasting 6-7 years or so - have used the Dark Sun themes, and the Zeitgeist themes. And both are well-integrated into the setting lore, and really serve to flesh out the characters. So I've seen firsthand how they can be done just right.

Themes are that weird (bad?) kind of thing where the DM really needs to tailor them to his campaign. If they're well integrated, they rock!, if not, they feel like an extra jumble of mechanics there only to make your character have moar powa!

The "bad" thing about them is that creating fairly equivalent themes (i.e. balanced) is pretty hard - especially considering the official offerings we've gotten : some are almost all non-combat based, or very, very narrow, some just seem to be "here, have an extra attack option".

To me, they feel very much like 2e kits.

 

[MoutonRustique]

Personally, I've considered building classes around that idea. Pile of at-will effects that can apply to all abilities that involve some particular action. It'd actually work in 5e or 3.5/PF better than 4e, as 4e doesn't have coherent and intricate categories of action to apply to. [snip].

The bladesigner is an excellent starting point for this : you can add your "spell" to a standard action attack made on your turn. While the "predefined actions" may not seem to already exist, there is nothing stopping you from laying out clearly the context in which you wish effect X to be applied.

You could even give examples and counter-examples in a "side bar" - while 4e has always "insisted" (kinda) that at-will powers be limited to a few short sentences, there is nothing stopping us from changing that.

Just remember to make the wording as clear as possible and to keep the power/effect itself as simple as it can be. There are plenty of examples of things fairly wordy to explain that are rather simple once you understand them - board games are often an excellent example of this.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Themes are that weird (bad?) kind of thing where the DM really needs to tailor them to his campaign. If they're well integrated, they rock!, if not, they feel like an extra jumble of mechanics there only to make your character have moar powa!

They're about on par with Paragon Paths, and Epic Destinies, that way (both are also, technically, optional). A stronger medicine than backgrounds (Themes are in essence particularly butch backgrounds that grow with you as you level), not as extreme a treatment as PrCs.

To me, they feel very much like 2e kits.

Relatively speaking, sure. 2e was a very poorly-balanced game, kits were gasoline on that fire; 4e was a comparatively balanced game, themes another set of options that could be combo'd to stress that balance.

while 4e has always "insisted" (kinda) that at-will powers be limited to a few short sentences, there is nothing stopping us from changing that.

Just remember to make the wording as clear as possible and to keep the power/effect itself as simple as it can be. There are plenty of examples of things fairly wordy to explain that are rather simple once you understand them...

Divine Challenge is a very wordy at-will that's fairly intuitive once you've untangled it, for instance.

 

[MoutonRustique]

Divine Challenge is a very wordy at-will that's fairly intuitive once you've untangled it, for instance.

Yes! An excellent example - it is a power meant to be used often where the conditions to use it are rather wordy to explain, but once you're through, it's like: "Oh. It's just that."

On a similar tangent: one thing I would've liked would have a been a bit less "demo-mode" and a bit more standard rules omitted from stat-blocs.

As they are presently, they are perfect for first adventures and introductory materials, but after a few hours (note, just hours, not years of familiarity) some things would have best been condensed IMO.

Examples are:
mark violation - instead of always saying "if the target attacks another blah blah", just say "on mark violation". If there are extra considerations, like, no shifting or such, sure. But just the mark...

regen-stopping : almost all regenerating foes have a "this stops until.. when suffers x...". Something along the lines of [Regeneration 10, fire and radiant halts] for the usual cases would have been faster to parse.

You know, stuff like that. (For instance, I really like how they handled the shadar'kai in MM2 with the status [shrouded in gloom])

 

[Tony Vargas]

On a similar tangent: one thing I would've liked would have a been a bit less "demo-mode" and a bit more standard rules omitted from stat-blocs.

As they are presently, they are perfect for first adventures and introductory materials, but after a few hours (note, just hours, not years of familiarity) some things would have best been condensed IMO.

You're absolutely right, of course.
Maybe it's because I've run a lot of demo games and Encounters seasons, and even a long campaign with a few casual players who just never get to that point, but I'm happy to put up with the precise language in return for the clarity and consistency it provides.

But, say, had the CB been a halfway decent set of software, it could have gone further with the 'short description' thing, and had a 'condensed sheets' option with all your powers, items & feats on one page, with just enough info for an experienced player already familiar with the character to use them. I mean, with the off-line builder I could squeeze down the character sheet to 1 page, and edit class/race features and feats for brevity, but powers were always the 9/page cards, or the useless list, nothing between - and the on-line builder is horrid, that way, you can choose the look of the first page, after that it's just space-wasting absurdity, while leaving out key information, like, oh, your Paragon Path.

(was this the thread with the intentionally-killed-4e-conspiracy-theory, because there's another smoking gun: "oh, 4e is too complicated, we're going to make it simpler with Essentials - in support of that, have a minimum 5-page character sheet!" WTF?)

 

[MoutonRustique]

[snip]
(was this the thread with the intentionally-killed-4e-conspiracy-theory, because there's another smoking gun - oh, 4e is too complicated, we're going to make it simpler with Essentials - in support of that, have a minimum 5-page character sheet! WTF?)

I laughed at this - out loud. Had to share.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I did not find optimization a huge problem in 4e, in general, since it wasn't as execrably balanced as other editions. I have had some crazy optimizers in my games, of course, but the impact just wasn't as shattering as in 3.x - besides, to my mind 'optimization' can be an exercise in tailoring a build to concept, as much to tailoring for DPR or whatever.

Edit: to be clear, I often did find optimization to be a huge deal, in 4e, there was plenty of it to do,
if you were so inclined, plenty of players enthusiastically so inclined, and there were rewards to be eked out with sufficient system mastery. It just never dominated the whole experience 3.x/PF-style.

The problem with 3.x/PF is there's no such thing as optimization. The game is literally SO broken in terms of creating stupidly ridiculous characters that you simply cannot play with any allowance of optimization at all. This creates a real issue even for groups that aren't interested in power gaming, because there's just no clear boundary on what is acceptable. Plus it creates a situation where MANY (maybe a majority) of really nice thematic builds, even just vanilla PCs where you do nothing but take the logical expected choices, are so pathetically underpowered compared to even some very reasonable and obvious 'tier one' choices that you really have to play a game of getting DM approval for everything, and the DM has to figure out the implications of every choice, lest it produce some monstrosity.

Its a very playable and decent game, within those constraints, but its correct to say that 4e really provides a much easier path to USABLE characters, and really in the end all Essentials does is through a few new options in the mix and bend some aspects like resource management a bit. Even bent they're so far from the broken of 3.x or 2e (if you played with much beyond the core 3 books) that it is a vastly improved experience. So, even though Essentials frustrated me in several respects, it is still a net positive addition to the game. Maybe not the ideal of what we wanted, but I have always let players use it if they want and never felt like it was really causing any problems. I could even see running a party of nothing but the simpler E-classes just for a change of pace.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Increasing complexity & acting like 'prestige classes' sounds exactly like fleshing out and mechanically supporting backstory.
And, y'know, they did kinda make low-level heroic tier re-play more appealing to experienced players, now that I think of it. Another very positive feature, IMHO, giving the DM a little flexibility to tailor the start of a campaign to his players.

Yeah, IMHO the only issue with themes is they did increase complexity. Had they been introduced in the original core game they could have simply elided a few non-theme elements so that your theme could provide a bit of what class normally does (and maybe there could be an option to not have one and claw back what you'd 'lose' for it). The themes themselves are pretty good, although there are some clunkers in there the bulk of them are usable, if not mechanically good choices.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

How would you differentiate a character who is unique because they're way better at finding traps, or identifying ancient runes, or farming, than you would otherwise expect given their experience and natural ability?

I'd give them something dynamic. In this vein my own game has a type of Inspiration (not quite like the 5e version) where you can leverage one of your character's attributes (which would include feat-type things, backgrounds, class, character traits, etc) to make something advantageous happen (or disadvantageous so you can regain Inspiration). This allows for a wide variety of chances to show your uniqueness and makes even fairly bland 'feats' into something that adds interest to the game.