The Essential Knight

[mkill]

The only thing that would concern me is things that boost stances, which aren't limited by a Knight class feature fighters could potentially get.

And if the book comes out without anything that boosts stances you've panicked for no reason at all.

And frankly, there simply is no reason to give the Knight feats or whatever that boost stances. Since he's always in a stance anyway, you can just give him the bonus regardless of stances. This has the added benefit of being more simple, something that is a stated design goal of the product.

It's more likely that the scaling of stances will be handled by giving him better stances at higher levels (like the preview gets at lvl 7).

 

[Aegeri]

Guys, you're blowing this way out of proportion, really. I bet 10 bucks that the number of feats that will be updated for Essentials classes is zero. Yes, there is the odd chance that Charop will come up with something ueberbroken but I don't see it yet.

Will there be a pretty princess avatar and title on offer here? I'm pretty sure they won't update or errata anything myself personally.

Oh, and they can make him attack Ref instead of AC when using a light blade.

Which is hardly overpowered and is actually just downright awesome that it can be done. Not to mention such a build can be dex, int, wis or cha primary as well. I stab you with the sheer mesmerizing power of my manhood! Of course how overpowered that could be depends on how everything else fits together, but I do agree with you it's unlikely to be an issue (barring something dramatic).

At least we can wait until we've seen the complete writeup before we panic about possible brokenness.

I'm more worried about it being underpowered tbh.

It's good that the developers keep the game consistent and keep the new classes within the existing rules framework, but it it's completely sufficient if you can combine stuff that makes sense. Even if that stuff is only 10% of the options available to PHB fighters.

I assume you're trying to say that they should only allow stuff to combine if it makes sense to combine? I happen to agree, which is why I don't think they'll be publishing errata on older feats to make them compatible with the knight.

And if the book comes out without anything that boosts stances you've panicked for no reason at all.

It's a class based on stances.

Are you saying a class based on stances will have no options for improving stances?

Really?

Now that would surprise me.

And frankly, there simply is no reason to give the Knight feats or whatever that boost stances. Since he's always in a stance anyway, you can just give him the bonus regardless of stances. This has the added benefit of being more simple, something that is a stated design goal of the product.

That's my point, the feats wouldn't be generally for a specific stance they would boost them in general. Hence the original fighter grabbing them to boost his daily stances. Especially in paragon and beyond when the fighter gets a good selection of them, making boosting stances worthwhile.

 

[mkill]

It's a class based on stances.

Are you saying a class based on stances will have no options for improving stances?

Really?

Now that would surprise me.

Yes, I'm saying that there won't be any feats, items that boost stances (except for maybe a Knight-only feat to get an extra stance).

As I said, for a Knight there is no difference between "get this bonus while in a stance" and "always get this bonus".

So there is no need for the kind of feat you describe.

That's my point, the feats wouldn't be generally for a specific stance they would boost them in general. Hence the original fighter grabbing them to boost his daily stances. Especially in paragon and beyond when the fighter gets a good selection of them, making boosting stances worthwhile.

Ok, let's assume the unlikely. Essentials comes out and there is a Paragon feat
"Gain a +1 feat bonus to AC while in a stance".

* For the Knight, that feat is as good or bad as Plate Specialization. He's always in a stance, he's always wearing plate. Plate Spec has a prerequisite of Con 15, but it's safe to assume a Knight will have that.
In fact, all Knight stance feats need to be balanced to flat bonus or always-on feats, because that's what they are.

* For a PHB Fighter, the feat has an added cost that he needs to always be in a stance. Unless he has one of those encounter stances, it's a useless feat. (Wait, stance feats are worse for the PHB fighter? What are we panicking about again?)
And like the Knight, he can just as well take any of the armor specialization feats.

 

[Aegeri]

* For a PHB Fighter, the feat has an added cost that he needs to always be in a stance. Unless he has one of those encounter stances, it's a useless feat. (Wait, stance feats are worse for the PHB fighter? What are we panicking about again?)

The fighter in my epic game uses a stance every single combat easily (and has done so since paragon too). In fact he's encouraged to because they last all encounter, convey a very powerful benefit and are well worth the investment. This is a minor detriment to a stance based fighter you realize, plus it has a minor cost compared to plate specialization (no con requirement). So that means no putting points into con for it later and instead more points for strength/wisdom and maybe some dex (initiative and reflex defense).

I'm not seeing the downside here once you get the stances to use one every encounter. Of course you might be right and they have nothing that boosts stances - improving the basic thing that they actually do. Alternatively, they could eliminate a fighter pinching these from the knight easily, say by making it only on at-will stances (I don't remember if the fighter has any off hand). On the other hand, a fighter DOES have several encounter stances that do indeed last until the end of the encounter. So it's not hard at all for him to just use an encounter stance to benefit from any of these.

But again, if it only affects at-will stances I think that would solve the "potential" problem. We'll just have to see, but I'll be remarkably surprised if a class based on at-will stances has no way of taking feats to improve or use stances better.

 

[mkill]

Aegeri... What I'm trying to tell you is that even if there are stance booster feats, they simply will be yet another feat. If they're not broken for the Knight, they're not broken for the PHB fighter either.

Maybe you should just stop trying to pull possible issues out of nowhere for imagined rules that nobody except the designers and playtesters has seen yet.

 

[Aegeri]

Aegeri... What I'm trying to tell you is that even if there are stance booster feats, they simply will be yet another feat. If they're not broken for the Knight, they're not broken for the PHB fighter either.

The "classic" fighter (we honestly need better naming conventions here) has considerably better stances, that's kind of my point as if I was a knight I wouldn't be taking knight stances - I would take classic fighter ones. Your logic also doesn't hold up, Hide Armour Expertise wasn't broken on Shamans as an example, but another class the Barbarian broke it entirely. Because one class broke the feat, it was nerfed into oblivion even though other classes found it fine. That easily disproves that just because something is okay in one context, it doesn't mean it will be in another.

Maybe you should just stop trying to pull possible issues out of nowhere for imagined rules that nobody except the designers and playtesters has seen yet.

I've already stated it's only possible, but it's definitely something that is worth considering in the long run in terms of errata/essentials viability. The Knight is a very different class to the original fighter, to me what might be fine in one context could be potentially broken in the other. This is part of my issues with this being "compatible". Just like how Hide Armour Expertise was perfectly fine in one context (shaman) yet absolutely chronically broken in another (Barbarian).

So your logic isn't sound. What isn't broken for one class can be broken for another. 4E has a history of this.

 

[mkill]

The Essentials Fighter will get better stances at higher levels. You assume that PHB Fighter stances are better, but you haven't seen the other side yet.

Hide Armor Expertise is a bad example because the feat was badly balanced against other Epic feats. The nerf was necessary. If a feat is balanced against other feats, it doesn't break whichever PC it is applied to.
If the Shaman needs an overpowered feat to fix its AC the Shaman is the problem.

If you apply this to the Knight, it means that the Knight should be competitive without the need for too pwerful feats.
We'll know more when the book is out.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The Essentials Fighter will get better stances at higher levels. You assume that PHB Fighter stances are better, but you haven't seen the other side yet.

Hide Armor Expertise is a bad example because the feat was badly balanced against other Epic feats. The nerf was necessary. If a feat is balanced against other feats, it doesn't break whichever PC it is applied to.
If the Shaman needs an overpowered feat to fix its AC the Shaman is the problem.

If you apply this to the Knight, it means that the Knight should be competitive without the need for too pwerful feats.
We'll know more when the book is out.

Context is EXACTLY the point though, and Hide Armor Expertise was a perfectly good example. There are many others. Heck, I'd say 75% of the things that have been nerfed in 4e were fine in the context that the designers originally envisaged. The problem is just that the more divergent contexts you have, the more of a hassle it is to design things that work as expected in all those different contexts.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

No, it was even not fine on a shaman, otherwise the fix would have been:

add: requirement shaman
...and a different feat would have been designed for the barbarian.

 

[shmoo2]

I wish the preview had been a little bitty bit more extensive. I find myself with more questions and less understanding of what to expect following this preview. More like a teaser than a preview.

What's funny is that after presenting these previews showing 30% of the rules for the heroic tier, WOTC employees have acted annoyed on message boards and later previews that folks are making incorrect assumptions about Essentials.

Give people enough information to make a sound judgment, and they'll do that; give people enough information to force them to speculate and they'll do that instead.

And I don't understand the value of withholding so much information in these previews. If they included the rules to make an entire Level 1 Essentials PC would they lose any sales?
To the contrary I think more people would be reassured by the extra information and they'd now plan to buy the books.