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Community
General Tabletop Discussion
D&D Older Editions
Core 4E vs. Essentials
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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7172838" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>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. </p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 7172838, member: 82106"] 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. [/QUOTE]
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Core 4E vs. Essentials
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