Hat's off to WotC for...

[blargney the second]

The minis in the Lords of Madness set are amazing. I picked up a pile of minis for the first time since I got my colossal red.
-blarg

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I always here about the power creep feats...

someone care to elaborate?

I hope you don´t mean the expertise feats with a twist and defense feats with a twist... as far as I am concerned i´d rathe have them than boring expertise feats or useless little riders...

I am eager to buy essentials. It seems like it is really useful for introducing 4th edition fast. Seems like that was the intend.

 

[delericho]

I went nearly a year without purchasing a WotC product (or even seriously considering a purchase). However, in the past two months WotC has turned out two products that I am dearly in love with. Hat's off to them for their excellent work.

What are you taking your Hat Off to WotC for?

Well, I'm no longer a WotC customer, and won't be until at least the release of 5e. However, the physical design of the Essentials products is pretty awesome, and very nearly dragged me back into the fold.

(Which might be read as my damning them with faint praise, but it's really not intended to be. The format of the new books really is great.)

 

[Pickles JG]

I always here about the power creep feats...

someone care to elaborate?

I hope you don´t mean the expertise feats with a twist and defense feats with a twist... as far as I am concerned i´d rathe have them than boring expertise feats or useless little riders...

I am eager to buy essentials. It seems like it is really useful for introducing 4th edition fast. Seems like that was the intend.

I hated the expertise feats as they were a blatant feat tax. Now with the riders they give you some choices too. So you always take one but you get something else for free - it's like having a tax rebate.

Of course it doesn't fix dragon breath et al which deserve +1 per tier to hit reworked in - newer "not implement or weapon" powers eg in Dark Sun do this, being stat +3/+6/+9 not +2/+4/+6

I am pretty meh about the essentials class book(s) but I love the tiles & the box they came in, like the RC & look forward to the Monster & DM boxes. Redbox was worse than Meh but my nephews are getting it . I have no nostalgic attachment to the original - it was ADD all the way for me baby, until 3e.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Well, if by classic you mean dull and repetitive if you aren't a caster and by bold design you mean instilling a new system which clashes with the rest of the game and is difficult to integrate (multiclassing, hybrids, 'fixing' melee training when it wasn't broken pre-essentials).

I've been playing a slayer for a few weeks now for Encounters. It certainly does it's job dealing damage fairly well. However, it's tactically quite boring. Run up, whack something, repeat. Compared to other strikers (even the essentials thief) it has virtually no options, utterly lacks mobility, has no way to extricate himself out of a unwanted combat. I'm sure the simplicity will appeal to a certain subset of gamers but I got bored pretty quick. As well, the options in the character creation end are similarly limited.

The thing about the Slayer is that although I have absolutely no desire to ever play one, I'm glad it's there. There are people who don't like tactics at all and want to Just Hit Something and hit it hard. The presence of the Slayer allows them to do this without worrying about powers - and as long as its presence doesn't take away my monks, warlords, and PHB fighters then I welcome it. Expanding the game to allow more play styles is good.

 

[Lord Ernie]

Whether or not Essentials is good, the original design is good too, and I want to see a mixture of Essentials and "old" stuff in the future.

Mearls has all but said this would be the case, here on EnWorld somewhere, back when Essentials was being revealed. I don't remember exactly what he said, but when asked what the whole "Essentials will be used moving forward" thing meant, he said they'd still do old style At-will/Encounter/Daily classes (as a sidenote: calling them 'old style' made me chuckle), but that they'd keep using more design space and try different approaches to class mechanics, of which he listed the Psionic classes from PHB3 as an example.

Hence why all the panic about "Essentials replacing the core approach" is more or less baseless.

The thing about the Slayer is that although I have absolutely no desire to ever play one, I'm glad it's there. There are people who don't like tactics at all and want to Just Hit Something and hit it hard. The presence of the Slayer allows them to do this without worrying about powers - and as long as its presence doesn't take away my monks, warlords, and PHB fighters then I welcome it. Expanding the game to allow more play styles is good.

This. Very much this. I have several players in my campaign who are new to RPG's in general, and aren't interested in overly tactical play specifically. They're part of the reason our combats still tend to run long, cause where the more tactically-minded players have by now learned to finish thinking outside of their turns and quickly get to it, the others still need lots of time to think when their turn comes up.

This is the counter to all the "The Slayer, Thief, and Knight are tactically boring! Only using basic attacks sucks!" complaints I keep hearing: people who love having more types of powers on those kinds of characters are not the intended target of these classes. They already have the Fighter and Rogue to do what they want to do - note that these are some of the most supported classes in the game right now.

 

[Alaxk Knight of Galt]

I've been playing a slayer for a few weeks now for Encounters. It certainly does it's job dealing damage fairly well. However, it's tactically quite boring. Run up, whack something, repeat. Compared to other strikers (even the essentials thief) it has virtually no options, utterly lacks mobility, has no way to extricate himself out of a unwanted combat. I'm sure the simplicity will appeal to a certain subset of gamers but I got bored pretty quick. As well, the options in the character creation end are similarly limited.

This has not been my experience with Slayer. I'm currently playing a Thri'Kreen Slayer who uses spears in a Dark Sun game. During the first encounter alone, he threw a Javelin, charged with a Gouge, and broke out his Trident and Shield when he got separated from the defender.

I think, for a Slayer, it is key to pick up different weapons for different situations. You need to have a defensive fall back set, an all out offensive set, and a ranged set of options. The class doesn't spell that out, but the mechanics support it.

As for mobility and escaping from an unwanted combatant, what's wrong with the old shift+charge trick

 

[Jack Colby]

For over 30 years there was always a D&D class for people who just want to roll the die and try to hit something with a weapon. And spellcasters were there for the people who wanted a variety of things to do and special powers to manage. Different people gravitate towards different classes because the playstyles are so different.

This was a good thing, by the way.

If fighters bored you, you were not a "fighter person" and should play a different class, but there were also many people who like fighters being tactically (by game mechanics/complexity, anyhow) "uninteresting".

Unfortunately, 4E lumped the classes all together in the name of making them all equally "fun" or "interesting" (in other words, all as complicated as a spellcaster was previously), which was clearly a mistake, and now they have made strides towards fixing it.

I'm all for that!

 

[Neonchameleon]

For over 30 years there was always a D&D class for people who just want to roll the die and try to hit something with a weapon. And spellcasters were there for the people who wanted a variety of things to do and special powers to manage. Different people gravitate towards different classes because the playstyles are so different.

This was a good thing, by the way.

No. It was a good thing that there were some classes that were simpler than others. It wasn't a good thing that to have a tactically interesting class you needed to play a spellcaster. And fighters were people who wandered round wearing dunces' caps.

If fighters bored you, you were not a "fighter person" and should play a different class, but there were also many people who like fighters being tactically (by game mechanics/complexity, anyhow) "uninteresting".

And the concept of a fighter does not bore me. Someone who works by being superb with cold steel, matching his wits and weapons that against the flashiest displays of the mages and coming out on top. On the other hand the 3e fighter couldn't do this. To match wits rather than just brute strength requires tactical control.

Unfortunately, 4E lumped the classes all together in the name of making them all equally "fun" or "interesting" (in other words, all as complicated as a spellcaster was previously), which was clearly a mistake, and now they have made strides towards fixing it.

I'm all for that!

They fixed one huge mistake at the expense of creating another. With luck we can get a Blast-Sorceror equally centred round At Wills and Admixtures to be almost as simple to play as the Slayer. So people who want to just Blow Stuff Up also have their class.

As for being "As complicated as a spellcaster was previously", I've never had to re-write my Warlord's character sheet because of Dispel Magic. Or rewrite his powers because I slept for the night and prepared something entirely different.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Unfortunately, 4E lumped the classes all together in the name of making them all equally "fun" or "interesting" (in other words, all as complicated as a spellcaster was previously), which was clearly a mistake, and now they have made strides towards fixing it.

4E fighters are as complicated as a 3.5 caster of equal level?

No, not seeing it. A 10th level caster in 3.5 (Let's say wizard) could cast at least 20 spells a day, plus int bonus, and a 10th level fighter in 4E has 11, plus perhaps a few for magical items, but ditto for 3.5 so no change there.

4E is a lot simpler for all the classes. Spellslinger or not.