4e: big change in essentials: no more daily powers!

[Jhaelen]

Or for that matter, the hardcore 2E AD&D groups which banned the Player's Options books.

Woot! I guess this means, I'm retroactively, officially hardcore, now!

Considering Essentials is supposed to be 'evergreen', maybe they'll even find a new German partner who'll provide translated versions. Currently, D&D is officially dead, with Pathfinder replacing it in the German rpg landscape.

 

[Obryn]

I wonder how many happy and satisfied 4E fans are grumbling about Essentials?

I've seen a few, but not many. It looks more like a lot of I-told-you-so's and "hmmmm..."s and "4.5omfg!"s from folks who aren't fans of 4e, anyways.

I think a whole lot of folks who actually play 4e know two things:
(1) We could, honestly, probably use a 4.5, to clear up some otherwise-insoluble issues with the first core book release. Later releases - from PHB2 and on - have been much higher-quality.
(2) Wizards can't make me buy new books. They can barely even encourage me to do so, if the book is mostly crunch. I have DDI, and don't need it.

As a 4e fan, I won't know whether or not to grumble until I can see a PHB Fighter and an Essentials Fighter side-by-side, and neither one is particularly better than the other. I also won't know whether or not to grumble until I see how the future releases look.

If it's exactly what the article says it is, I think making it so some class builds play differently than others could be downright brilliant and - actually - long over-due.

-O

 

[Raven Crowking]

Thoughts?

I'd call this 4.5.


RC


-

 

[Kitesh]

As a new-ish player, I don't get the hand-wringing. As far as I can tell (my close reading skills having lapsed somewhat since Lit 101), the gist of the announcement is "Here's some new stuff- we pinky-swear it doesn't change any of the current stuff."

Now, there will always be people who hate the current stuff and were irrationally hoping the new stuff would herald a return to the old stuff. But what I don't understand is the seemingly large number of people (at least among people I follow here and on Twitter) who like the current stuff and yet are still "worried about Essentials." Worried about what? Worried that WotC is lying through their teeth and has a secret plan to totally sabotage the current stuff? Seems unlikely. Worried that Essentials won't be a magic silver bullet that has every 13-18 year old in the world playing D&D three times a week as an introduction to a lifetime of RPG goodness? Well, that hope seems irrational too.

From my usual standpoint of "hey, how does this affect ME", it looks likes it provides even more options for building the kind of game and character I want. I have a hard time getting worried about that.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

I've seen a few, but not many. It looks more like a lot of I-told-you-so's and "hmmmm..."s and "4.5omfg!"s from folks who aren't fans of 4e, anyways.

Well, that was what I was sarcastically insinuating. The usual suspects puffing smoke again...

I think a whole lot of folks who actually play 4e know two things:
(1) We could, honestly, probably use a 4.5, to clear up some otherwise-insoluble issues with the first core book release. Later releases - from PHB2 and on - have been much higher-quality.
(2) Wizards can't make me buy new books. They can barely even encourage me to do so, if the book is mostly crunch. I have DDI, and don't need it.

As for 1, errata and supplements(hello shiny Paladin candy) have taken care of most of the issues on the players side(Warlocks being lackluster outside of hardcore powergaming being an exception). I'm sure a lot of people would get some use out of a PHB with some of the "fixes" from Martial/Arcane/Divine/ect power books and errata. The real glaring thing a 4.5 book could deliver would be a Monster Manual 1 of the same quality as the second two.

As for 2, I don't think anything WotC does is going to make a big difference to those people.

As a 4e fan, I won't know whether or not to grumble until I can see a PHB Fighter and an Essentials Fighter side-by-side, and neither one is particularly better than the other. I also won't know whether or not to grumble until I see how the future releases look.

If it's exactly what the article says it is, I think making it so some class builds play differently than others could be downright brilliant and - actually - long over-due.

-O

Psionics with power points didn't break anything, so I'm not that worried. With splatbooks, Dragon articles and new mechanics they've done a consistently good job at balance during 4E. If anything, I'd expect them to err on the underpowered side of imbalance.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

As a new-ish player, I don't get the hand-wringing. As far as I can tell (my close reading skills having lapsed somewhat since Lit 101), the gist of the announcement is "Here's some new stuff- we pinky-swear it doesn't change any of the current stuff."

Now, there will always be people who hate the current stuff and were irrationally hoping the new stuff would herald a return to the old stuff. But what I don't understand is the seemingly large number of people (at least among people I follow here and on Twitter) who like the current stuff and yet are still "worried about Essentials." Worried about what? Worried that WotC is lying through their teeth and has a secret plan to totally sabotage the current stuff? Seems unlikely. Worried that Essentials won't be a magic silver bullet that has every 13-18 year old in the world playing D&D three times a week as an introduction to a lifetime of RPG goodness? Well, that hope seems irrational too.

From my usual standpoint of "hey, how does this affect ME", it looks likes it provides even more options for building the kind of game and character I want. I have a hard time getting worried about that.

Most of the people "worrying" in this thread aren't people who "like the current stuff".

 

[ExploderWizard]

(2) Wizards can't make me buy new books. They can barely even encourage me to do so, if the book is mostly crunch. I have DDI, and don't need it.

-O

Maybe you could help me find something in the compendium? 2 of my players created some replacement characters for the campaign. One has a familiar and the other is a ranger with a beast companion. Where online are the actual general rules for these things? The creatures are in the CB but the rules for using them are where in the compendium? Maybe my search skills stink.

 

[Obryn]

Maybe you could help me find something in the compendium? 2 of my players created some replacement characters for the campaign. One has a familiar and the other is a ranger with a beast companion. Where online are the actual general rules for these things? The creatures are in the CB but the rules for using them are where in the compendium? Maybe my search skills stink.

OK, but you have to follow my instructions closely... WAIT! THEY'RE NOT THERE! OMG! This means that familiars and beast companions are 4.5! It happened so much sooner than I thought it would!

My point stands. Unless there's a brand new and intricate rule subsystem, the Character Builder and Compendium will handle it just fine.

-O

 

[thecasualoblivion]

Maybe you could help me find something in the compendium? 2 of my players created some replacement characters for the campaign. One has a familiar and the other is a ranger with a beast companion. Where online are the actual general rules for these things? The creatures are in the CB but the rules for using them are where in the compendium? Maybe my search skills stink.

To answer this honestly, the compendium really doesn't seem to answer these. There is a bad description of the beast companion rules in the Ranger class entry. It has some things missing from it and isn't entirely clear. The base familiar rules I can't seem to find, and my compendium-fu is pretty strong. The Familiar rules I'd advise finding the Dragon article that spawned them, which isn't difficult. For the Ranger, I think the only solutions are physically reading Martial Power or getting somebody on a forum you can trust to explain it to you.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

My own thoughts is that, with the exception nature of 4e rules it should be possible to create lots of variant classes with out much if any power creep.

Though I do not see how a daily only class could work and be balanced at the same time.
In that, I think it would be possible to create a class with at wills only and some resource to spend to create encounter and daily like powers the daily only class would have only one or two dailies that corresponded to the normal dailies and the rest would be quite poor so the class would not be worth taking or they would be better and the class would be overpowered.

What seems to me to be possible in the current structure are:
Classes as they are; with at wills, enounter and daily powers
Classes with augmentable at will powers, to encounter and to daily levels.
Classes with at wills and encounters with an option to augment some encounters in to dailies.
Classes with at wills and encounters with a recharge mechanism for encounter powers.
I suppose that at wills, augment at wills to encounter and daillies only could be managed.