Turning an Essentials character into a non-Essentials character

Atlemar · Sep 23, 2010

I got my first chance to flip through Heroes of the Starts-with-F Geographies last night at Encounters.

It would have been great for my game two years ago when I had nongamers joining a game I organized for coworkers.

However, what if, say, someone builds a warpriest, plays a couple levels, and then sees someone else with PHB and DivPow, and decides he wants to use one of those powers instead? For the sake of staying in the 4E balance system, does the warpriest have to stay a warpriest?

Same question for the mage, really.

And I guess for the fighter, too -- should they be allowed to take a PHB or MarPow encounter at level 3 instead of the one they get?

RandomCitizenX · Sep 23, 2010

Dailies and Utilities can still be picked from any source for the Warpriest, from what I understand. It is only the Encounters that are locked by the Domain choice. If they would want to completely reroll, it shouldn't be too hard to just let them reroll as a thematically similar character.

The Slayer and Knight are a trickier situation since they have an entirely different set up for their powers than the PHB1 fighter and the martial power builds. Only choice would be to reroll entirely, especially since the Slayer is a different party role.

yesnomu · Sep 23, 2010

To build on what RandomCitizen said, the Slayer and Knight have no encounter or daily powers (besides a reactive damage boost feature and utility powers) at all. So there's nothing to take the MP/PHB powers in the place of.

That said, the base fighter is probably superior to a Knight (though the Knight's defender mechanic is awfully nice), and a barbarian with an eye towards the less-magical rages can replace a Slayer easily.

Atlemar · Sep 23, 2010

I think the Slayer and the Knight do have encounter powers. The damage boost turns a 1[W] hit into a 2[W] hit, which is pretty much what an encounter is. It's a little less effective on the extras, but you never waste it on a miss. So it seems -- but I could be wrong, hence why I'm asking -- that allowing an Essentials Fighter to take another encounter instead of that would be fine.

As for the warpriest, is the encounter *locked in* by the domain, to the extent that choosing another encounter would break the build? I got the impression in my quick read-through that the power selection was pre-made to keep it thematic and easy, but not necessarily because only those would balance.

mneme · Sep 23, 2010

I don't see any indication that a warpriest has to pick the domain powers.

The rule listed was that if they had a level number listed, you could switch them out. Domain powers have a level number listed, and are, in fact, listed as "cleric encounter 3", just like any other 3rd level cleric power.

mneme · Sep 23, 2010

I'm actually not even convinced the warpriest domain encounters are locked to the domain at all; is there any reason to believe that you can't take them if you don't take the domain? They look like cleric powers from here.

The slayer/knight probably wouldn't be broken by being allowed to take encounter powers rather than extra uses/expansion of the damage boost power. But if you're playing by the rules, that's not listed or available as an option--unlike warpriest domain encounters , they're not "Fighter Attack 1", but "Fighter Attack".

mkill · Sep 24, 2010

According to the Essentials podcast, the domain encounter power is intended as a default choice that can be switched out as desired. I don't know how explicit this is in the actual rules text.

As for Power Strike / Backstab vs. Encounters and Tricks / Stances vs. At-Wills, it's not possible as written, but if the DM wants to experiment you could do it anyway. It's just that you enter house rule territory, with the usual disclaimers.

AbdulAlhazred · Sep 24, 2010

Yeah, AFAIK if a power is "Class Attack N" or "Class Utility N" then you can pick it for any slot just like you always have been able to. This means both that Essentials PCs can pick any power from any rules source when they get a power choice and that non-essentials characters can select such a power from an Essentials source. No rule anyone has pointed out anywhere seems to override that and it IS the general rule. I don't see why a Warpriest would HAVE to take domain powers at all, they are just considered default choices.

Obviously Essentials Martial PCs have a significant disadvantage here. They CAN still pick utility powers from their class however. In the case of the Fighter sub-classes that can give you access to some pretty nice older stuff. Other than that by RAW they seem to be stuck with the feature based stuff they get.

I think the lesson is if you really want flexibility with a Martial character, go the 'classic' 4e route. For the Mage and the Warpriest they're basically in gravy, they can use anything for Wizard and Cleric respectively and get some nice features to boot. I can't see much reason you'd want to switch a Mage to PHB1 Wizard, the school benefits seem overall at least as good as the older implement masteries. Hard to see many people wanting to do that switch. Likewise the old STR Cleric is a good build but it is hard to really see what you'd gain by using it over Warpriest.