D&D 4E Inquiry: How do 4E fans feel about 4E Essentials?

[cbwjm]

They did something similar to one of those! In Player's options- Heros of the Elemental Chaos!

The Elementalists Sorcerer was about as close as they've come to making dead simple caster. The Elementalists gain no encounter or daily
attack powers from their class, but instead rely on at-will attack powers that have additional effects activated with the elemental escalation power.

You get Elemental Bolt as an AT-Will attack, along with another at-will power determined by your chosen elemental type. You unlocked two more at wills at 9 and 19.

They you get Elemental Escalation as the magical equivalent of Power Strike, usable 1/encounter, with extra uses unlocking at 3, 7 and 13.

Then, after that? All you get is utility powers, which are a solid mix of encounter and daily powers, in addition to the ones in the PHB 2.

The elemental sorcerer was quite cool as an option, just a straight up elemental themed blaster. I can't quite remember the specifics of the class, but I know I was keen to play a genasi elemental sorcerer.

 

[Garthanos]

Yeah, the Slayer was the answer to a number of (dubious) complaints: Fighters with dailies, 'simple' classes' and in this case, Fighters not being Strikers.

Many people picked 'this class has a name and I have expectations' as their hill to die on and they wanted the Fighter to be a DPS class first and foremost despite The game shipping with two martial strikers already, Martial as a power source having secondary Striker and Defender Elements across all classes, and Martial Power delivering a TWF DPS Fighter.

But that wasn't enough. The core fighter had to be a Strike with no dailies and as little mechanical complexity or by gum there would be Abyss to pay.

That wasn't enough, indeed to take interesting alternatives away they needed a new edition. The abyss as in oblivion as in an edition of the game taken from production faster than ever before?

 

[Garthanos]

They did something similar to one of those! In Player's options- Heros of the Elemental Chaos!

Eventually although long after essentials was officially "finished", about 2 years after which in 4e "hyper produce we have to please Hasbro land", was a long time LOL. I wouldn't be surprised if it was produced in response to the complaints about the "martials must be simple, but not casters bias" of actual essentials.

 

[Minigiant]

Eventually although long after essentials was officially "finished", about 2 years after which in 4e "hyper produce we have to please Hasbro land", was a long time LOL. I wouldn't be surprised if it was produced in response to the complaints about the "martials must be simple, but not casters bias" of actual essentials.

It was less "martials must be simple" and more "everything cool or complex a martial character gets is complained about".

Because it wasn't constrained to warrior character class and expert character classes. It bled to other magic classes like warlock and sorcerer. The elementalist sorcerer was a nice experiment however it hardcoded sorcerer's as dumb blaster. The binder was just a wimpy base warlock. And the hexblade used weapon so you know what happened.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Essentials was great, because it made the game feel more in line with older editions. It was nice that wizards now have a spellbook. It was nice that fighters had stances and you could just attack and feel good.

 

[Garthanos]

It was nice that wizards now have a spellbook.

they had a spell book in the player's handbook and a ritual book.... and far more rituals than you can get in 5e even after all this time.

Stances were existent in the player's handbook too. Including one of my favorites. Which I cannot even approach in the latest edition.

Holding an at-will stance that does nothing but decide your at-will effect is a laughable pretend difference than having an at-will.

 

[Vaalingrade]

It's not like the original 4e fighter went away, the knight and the slayer were just different options for those that wanted it and for many of us, we preferred them. Or in my case, I would have preferred them. If I got into a 4e game now, I'd probably run a slayer.

On paper, but at the time, Essentials only or 'You can only play Slayer fighter because Fighter hurts my verisimilitude' ruled the land like the Sharptooth in Land Before Time. Essentials was pushed as standalone pretty hard after all.

Or…people wanted a simple fighter that didn’t require tracking marks.

'Simple fighter' is what people say in hindsight, but at the time, you never heard anything about simplicity. You heard about how fighters should be damage dealers, how roles were the debil, how fighters having 'spells' didn't make sense. This is, in fact, the first time I've ever heard a complaint about marks.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I've heard complains about marks, because they are videogamey, not because they were fiddly.
Of course, the way marks worked was a lot less videoamey than they usually work in videogames, where you just have some abstract "aggro" stat and for some reason, your fighter damage produces more aggro than the DPS guy's aggro.
But Marks usually came with mechanical add-ons that actually seem to make sense in the fiction - because you're not focusing on the Fighter, he slips past your defenses and hits you. Or his god punishes you for striking the Paladin's friend Ouch. So your choice is dealing with the high damage guy and having the moderate damage guy turned into a high damage guy, or deal with the moderate damage guy that can take more punishment than the high damage guy. You're caught between a rock and a hard place.

 

[Garthanos]

You're caught between a rock and a hard place.

A rock and a hard place... a proper fighter nickname.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Unpopular opinion: Marks were a new, more interesting form of Morale, which doesn't instantly end the fight, but forces enemy decisions and can actually be used on PCs.