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

[doctorbadwolf]

Did it? It clearly broke the resource refresh model,

Did it? It broadened it, but I never saw any breaking in play.

and it undid a lot of the benefits of AEDU, which IMHO are pretty nice. I'd be far overstating the case to say it was bad or even not reasonably solid, but it was going in the wrong direction for 4e.

Well, no, it went in a direction you didn’t prefer.

It made the game LESS playable.

No, it didn’t.

I don't even think that the e-classes were all that 'easier to play' as they were supposedly intended to be. Slayer, you STILL have to pick a stance every round (or decide not to change what you have now, same thing) vs picking an At-Will in classic 4e, no difference in cognitive burden there at all,

Most of the time you are just hitting and moving. That’s it. Even the number of stances is fewer than the list of encounter and daily powers.

but IMHO stances are not as straightforward as "hit it with this power" is. Likewise you have to keep track of how many power attacks you have and if you want to use one now or not, which is maybe slightly simpler than picking one of a couple of encounter powers or deciding to use a daily, and then keeping track of those. Its pretty close to a toss-up. There's some simplification in character build, granted, but effectively that comes at the cost of losing a lot of options.

And those additional options weren’t valuable to a lot of players. Also, you still had those options.

Certainly Slayer is no simpler than Bow Ranger, or TWF Ranger either really. Nor likewise the other e-classes.

Yes, it is. It’s much simpler. Less to think about while leveling and when deciding on an action, practically no mental overhead at all. Pick target, attack, use your one encounter power as much as possible every encounter. You can build a Ranger to be fairly simple, but that process isn’t simple, and you still have to review powers and choose one every single turn.

I still would have rather seen the effort going into issuing a rewritten set of core PHB1 classes, which they clearly DID have in mind, since they eventually released some cleanups in Dragon and posted on DDI towards the end. Clearly that book would have been no less successful than Essentials... (some of which we could have gotten as well, MV and the adventures).

Clearly? I don’t think that’s clear at all.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yeah, I use OO Calc, or I did for a good while. Built some sheets for my own homebrew, but I've found that nowadays Google Sheets has advanced to a point where it really beats Calc or Excel hands down, and the collaborative nature of that platform has obvious applications... You can build service functions there too, and call them from sheets, docs, or even web pages. I mean, you could do that with AWS/GCP/Azure and some know-how as well, but the Google version of it does kind of lower the bar. Its a BIG improvement over what they had 5 or 6 years ago.

You know I may need to give google sheets another go. I’ve been using Microsoft office for all my game building, and while I really like my current character sheet, it has no functionality. It’s just excel tables pasted to a word doc as pictures. Works quite well printed, but I am gonna have to redesign from scratch at some point to get a fillable digital sheet. If google has significantly better integration between tools, it may be worth learning a new system.

 

[S'mon]

I just don't have the patience as a GM to set up all the macros and tokens and maps and stuff. I want to be able to buy pre-made Roll20/whatever modules. :waaaah:

You can just upload jpg/gif maps and stretch them to fit; takes a couple minutes.
Token Stamp 2 is great for making tokens, a lot can be reused frequently. There are also free token art sites.
I don't bother with macros except one for rolling Init in my 5e games - and that only because WoTC told me how to write it (in their Roll20 adventure conversions). The 4e Roll20 PC sheet includes facility for rolling init, attacks, skills etc.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I don't even think that the e-classes were all that 'easier to play' as they were supposedly intended to be. Slayer, you STILL have to pick a stance every round (or decide not to change what you have now, same thing) vs picking an At-Will in classic 4e, no difference in cognitive burden there at all, but IMHO stances are not as straightforward as "hit it with this power" is. Likewise you have to keep track of how many power attacks you have and if you want to use one now or not, which is maybe slightly simpler than picking one of a couple of encounter powers or deciding to use a daily, and then keeping track of those. Its pretty close to a toss-up. There's some simplification in character build, granted, but effectively that comes at the cost of losing a lot of options.

Certainly Slayer is no simpler than Bow Ranger, or TWF Ranger either really. Nor likewise the other e-classes. Warpriest, meh, not really simpler either, though you have less options to pick from, slightly.

This is simply wrong and the slayer is both simpler than the bow ranger and opens the game up a bit more.

• You do not have to pick your stance from round to round. You just declare the +1 to hit stance at the start of the campaign, write it on your character sheet, and you're done.
• The Slayer has excellent chunking; instead of trying to decide at the same time who you're attacking and how you're going to hit them, it gets broken down into simple steps. So if you are facing four foes although the Slayer has officially 16 options they have two at the start (keep or switch stance), four in who to hit, and two in whether to power attack or not. Three simple choices. Meanwhile the equivalent AEDU fighter or ranger with two encounter powers (and no dailies) has a single choice with sixteen options. It's the same number of possibilities but much more overwhelming.
• You only have Power Attack to worry about rather than a rash of encounter powers.

So the slayer, for most people is far simpler.

Equally importantly the slayer is different. Some things just click with some people and others with others. And the slayer clicks with some people the AEDU classes don't. This is a good thing. I know I'd find playing a slayer incredibly tedious but it doesn't harm my fun if someone else is playing one and they get more fun out of it than an orthodox AEDU class.

The warpriest annoys me because I could see some interesting design space opening up. The trade-off should have been basically a mostly pregenerated character that couldn't cherry pick the best powers in exchange for some bonuses you couldn't get from the base class; there's quite a lot of potential design space there but they used none of it and instead basically had a less flexible cleric.

 

[Garthanos]

• You do not have to pick your stance from round to round. You just declare the +1 to hit stance at the start of the campaign, write it on your character sheet, and you're done.

You can pick ie it is an available option, and that to me means to not consider choosing means I may have missed an opportunity to do something which may be situationally better... same exact thing with an at-will and just always grabbing one at-will while ignoring the other.( In fact with the ranger grabbing only one at-will every time is ahem probably perfect but boring LOL).

Do I use an an encounter? vs (do I instead use an encounter vs daily) is the difference in choice at level 1, one more option...ooh ah.. how incredibly more complex /sarcasm.

I think people really really exaggerate the difference in simplicity of use (and over emphasize the umm simplicity of other players)

 

[Neonchameleon]

You can pick ie it is an available option, and that to me means to not consider choosing means I may have missed an opportunity to do something which may be situationally better... same exact thing with an at-will and just always grabbing one at-will while ignoring the other.( In fact with the ranger grabbing only one at-will every time is ahem probably perfect but boring LOL).

Do I use an an encounter? vs (do I instead use an encounter vs daily) is the difference in choice at level 1, one more option...ooh ah.. how incredibly more complex /sarcasm.

I think people really really exaggerate the difference in simplicity of use (and over emphasize the umm simplicity of other players)

For me, and for you, there is little difference. But we are not 100% of the potential players of 4e or even close. There definitely are players who prefer stances and I've DM'd for two at the same table who were struggling a bit with 4e until one of them got to play a scout (not even a slayer) and another a pyromancer (elementalist).

These are also not normally people who worry about the optimal action - just one that's good enough. And before you say that the scout isn't any simpler than e.g. a 4e PHB Ranger, for you and me this would be right. But he had two years of 4e experience and by the second session he was far far more fluid with the rebuilt scout than he had been with the ranger he'd been playing for three months.

I think people really really don't understand that different people have different thought processes and don't all think the same way. And seriously underestimate that one of the strengths of a class system is being able to cater more effectively to different players.

 

[Garthanos]

For me, and for you, there is little difference. But we are not 100% of the potential players of 4e or even close.

one more real choice?

I prefer more options than the standard ranger gives (let alone the slayer) their at-wills/encounters and dailies are too similar so yes, its easy to note that I am not the target but someone is really turning a molehill of difference into a mountain.

There definitely are players who prefer stances and I've DM'd for two at the same table who were struggling a bit with 4e until one of them got to play a scout (not even a slayer) and another a pyromancer (elementalist).

elementalist not even available in actual essentials (two years after actually) because those who like martial are the simplistic people you know they cannot comprehend the complexity of actual true choices.

These are also not normally people who worry about the optimal action - just one that's good enough.

tadah ranger twin strike to the rescue.... no worries

And before you say that the scout isn't any simpler than e.g. a 4e PHB Ranger, for you and me this would be right. But he had two years of 4e experience and by the second session he was far far more fluid with the rebuilt scout than he had been with the ranger he'd been playing for three months.

Were these anecdotal examples acclimatised by "I hit it" being the only option.
or actual new people. It really was wasted effort the people that were ravaging the boards were not coming on board (nor representative really).

Tony Vargas has huge example anecdotes of this being simple for many new people. Perhaps you two should duel.

 

[Neonchameleon]

one more real choice?

I prefer more options than the standard ranger gives their at-wills/encounters and dailies are too similar so yes, its easy to note that I am not the target but someone is really turning a molehill of difference into a mountain

It's not all about you. I don't want to play with a collection of clones of me at the same table.

elementalist not even available in actual essentials because those who like martial are the simplistic people you know they cannot comprehend the complexity of actual true choices.

Which to me looks like two peas in a pod with your approach of "Everyone must have AEDU and if it doesn't click with you then tough".

I don't want simple martial and complex caster. I want simple martial and simple caster and complex martial and complex caster.

tadah ranger twin strike to the rescue.... no worries

Which was exactly why we'd given him a twin striking ranger. But it took the respec to a scout for it to click.

Were these anecdotal examples acclimatised by "I hit it" being the only option.
or actual new people. It really was wasted effort the people that were ravaging the boards were not coming on board.

Veterans who'd been playing since the 70s in both cases. And the player playing a pyromancer had almost been groping for that character that long; he'd been fumbling with wizards for almost as long as he'd been playing D&D because burnination was one of his power fantasies. So he was oscillating between wizards (and fumbling a little) and martial characters (which weren't so much of what he wanted to play). And now he got this character that did fire damage - and lots of it - every turn and without having to read spells or power cards every time he wanted to cast something?

Tony Vargas has huge example anecdotes of this being simple for many new people. Perhaps you should duel.

Why is there a need for a duel? Nowhere have I said AEDU was bad - and it's simple for me. What I've said is that different people respond well to different things and that gatekeeping is bad.

 

[Vaalingrade]

The Slayer and other AEDU-breakers being added to 4e is like classes with a competent rest cycle being added to 5e - whether you think it's good or bad, it's going to break how the game handles rest beyond recognition.

 

[Garthanos]

Why is there a need for a duel? Nowhere have I said AEDU was bad - and it's simple for me.

Because his anecdotes indicate it is simple for the vast majority of the humans not mired by bias.