Why the renaming of classes?

[WalterKovacs]

With the warlord, they could either rename it now, or wait until they do make a new build. Now is a good opportunity (since it's doing the class compendium stuff) and they'll have that name available if/when they do make an Essential build of the class.

The big reason for the ones with E-classes is that they are making feats for them right now. So the templar can take a feat to trade class features with the warpriest, the slayer or knight can get powers from the weaponmaster, etc.

 

[DEFCON 1]

WotC has run into the problem where because they didn't make the PH1 "builds" as distinct from each other along the lines of the 2E kits... what would have been the most obvious way to differentiate them from each other and from the Essential builds has come up short.

Very few people ever used the "Artful Dodger", "Brutal Scoundrel", "Ruthless Ruffian", "Aerialist", or "Cunning Sneak" designations to distinguish their rogues from each other... mainly because except for a single class feature, there was nothing really different from them. So what should have been a useful nomenclature at this point in time (with the advent of the Essentials names), they instead are kind of superfluous and WotC had to come up with a new term.

Had the builds been truly different and more kit-like... the Thief would have just been added to a Rogue subclass or kit list that included the Dodger, Scoundrel, Ruffian, Acrobat, and Sneak. These names would be already in our vocab, and adding the term Thief to the list would have been cake. Likewise, the clerics would have the Essentials Warpriest joining the Battler, Devotee, and Healer (or whatever better names they had come up with at the very beginning.) But since the builds were not as concrete as this... all fighters were just fighters even with slightly different powers or mechanics for certain class features... this terminology has been unused.

Unfortunately, the shift in their design to Essentials turned what used to be fairly lightweight ideas of "builds" into a much more defining aspect of the class... thus the need to make more substantial names for their older, more namby-pamby builds.

 

[Klaus]

That's something Fighters did right. People refer to Battleragers, Tempests, Brawlers, in addition to Knights, Slayers and now Weaponmasters.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Every pigeonhole needs its own distinct name, don't you know!

 

[Zaran]

The thing is Slayer should be a Build that goes along with Battlerager, Tempest, and Weaponmaster. They confuse things even more because now there is Slayer (Fighter) and Weaponmaster (Fighter)(Tempest)... Or is it Tempst (Weaponmaster(Fighter))?

They have confused things even worse than before and made me unhappy because I like seeing Fighter under my class and not Weaponmaster (Fighter)

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Apart from the fact that are no clerics in Dark Sun, right?

But you could still build a primal-flavored character using cleric rules

 

[WalterKovacs]

The thing is Slayer should be a Build that goes along with Battlerager, Tempest, and Weaponmaster. They confuse things even more because now there is Slayer (Fighter) and Weaponmaster (Fighter)(Tempest)... Or is it Tempst (Weaponmaster(Fighter))?

They have confused things even worse than before and made me unhappy because I like seeing Fighter under my class and not Weaponmaster (Fighter)

They did miss out on an opportunity of not actually doing stuff like having battlerager, tempest, arena, etc not being their own thing, but that was partially something they missed out on when they were first making the new options is Martial Power. Instead of, for example, giving the character fewer armor proficiencies, it instead gets the cludgy "please wear lighter armor" clauses. And the various "take this instead of that" options could have been presented easier by just giving a set of things for each build.

Even before Essentials, most new classes at least new what was a "class" feature and what was a "build" feature ... the PHB1 classes have a lot of 'replace this class feature with that one" options, and not all of them are really build dependent. Like the warlord, you can be inspiring or resourceful, etc ... but you can also choose between giving bonuses to intiative, or to have an encounter power and heavy shield prof. And you can choose to give up some armor to get access to bows and stuff, etc.

So, the PHB classes sort of have a big mess of mixed together options for class features, so it's easier than making them seperate builds that all have to make the same 'other' choices.

But, it would be nice if the builder would "change" your class based on certain options. Like calling you a Battlerager Fighter, or a Resouceful Warlord, or say an Eldritch Knight (or whatever the 'build' for the Eladrin Knight mod is called)

 

[Camelot]

I still think of the original class names as the "main" ones. A character is a fighter (slayer) in my mind, not a slayer (fighter).

 

[chris.crouch]

The thing is Slayer should be a Build that goes along with Battlerager, Tempest, and Weaponmaster. They confuse things even more because now there is Slayer (Fighter) and Weaponmaster (Fighter)(Tempest)... Or is it Tempst (Weaponmaster(Fighter))?

AFAIK, the Tempest would be Fighter(Tempest) - the Weaponmaster is only the PHB1 fighter.

So we have Fighter (Weaponmaster) (or Weaponmaster Fighter ), Fighter (Tempest) , Fighter (Battlerager) , Fighter (Slayer) and Fighter (Knight).

So they should have introduced the new terminology with Martial Power.

 

[DNH]

WotC has run into the problem where because they didn't make the PH1 "builds" as distinct from each other along the lines of the 2E kits... what would have been the most obvious way to differentiate them from each other and from the Essential builds has come up short.

Very few people ever used the "Artful Dodger", "Brutal Scoundrel", "Ruthless Ruffian", "Aerialist", or "Cunning Sneak" designations to distinguish their rogues from each other... mainly because except for a single class feature, there was nothing really different from them. So what should have been a useful nomenclature at this point in time (with the advent of the Essentials names), they instead are kind of superfluous and WotC had to come up with a new term.

Had the builds been truly different and more kit-like... the Thief would have just been added to a Rogue subclass or kit list that included the Dodger, Scoundrel, Ruffian, Acrobat, and Sneak. These names would be already in our vocab, and adding the term Thief to the list would have been cake. Likewise, the clerics would have the Essentials Warpriest joining the Battler, Devotee, and Healer (or whatever better names they had come up with at the very beginning.) But since the builds were not as concrete as this... all fighters were just fighters even with slightly different powers or mechanics for certain class features... this terminology has been unused.

Unfortunately, the shift in their design to Essentials turned what used to be fairly lightweight ideas of "builds" into a much more defining aspect of the class... thus the need to make more substantial names for their older, more namby-pamby builds.

This follows my own thinking so closely that I could have written it myself!

When I first saw the "builds" thing three years ago, I thought "Nah, not for me" and largely ignored them, as did my players. It looks as though many other people did too (especially if you look at the CharOp forums) and so they have pretty much slid out of the game, or at least onto the periphery of most players' considerations.

What we have now is an uber-class of Fighter (for example), which includes the Weaponmaster, Slayer and Knight, and then there is a third level of Battlerager, Tempest, etc. I think I would have been happier if they had made a bigger deal of the builds in the first place, presenting them as proper sub-classes perhaps (a la 2e). It's a whole nomenclature problem, which is already complex enough with Controllers, Leaders, Strikers and Defenders (not to mention the equivalent - or non-equivalent - monster roles of Artillery, Brute, Soldier and so on).

Aaah, I don't know. It's certainly easy to say "WotC should have done this or that from the start" but we need to remember that this game is now three years old, longer if you include the pre-release period of R&D, and it has expanded and evolved during that time. There are elements we have now that we didn't have in 2008 and they are being incorporated as best they can be.

That said, for my money, the whole Essentials departure has caused more problems than it has solved.