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

[Garthanos]

So, it SEEMS like the things that WotC really was telling a story about was the more 'advanced' stuff like a VTT (maybe 3D etc, nobody knows for sure) etc. Anyway, I never either believed the "crazy guy tragedy" story, nor really thought WotC earned much blame here. They imagined something well beyond that capabilities, but you get noplace if you don't dream, and what WAS provided was pretty good quality.

I agree its wasnt about Character Builder / Monster Builder

 

[Neonchameleon]

When I was trying to build a Swordmage I noticed that I couldnt get shields (Abjurer) and attacks with Intelligence in melee(artificer), Swordbond (EK) etc etc without a ton of multiclass shenanigans and never did find away to teleport most of the time..

There are a number of ways to get a lot of teleports; the three that come to mind are the Monk of Shadow, the Echo Knight, and the Soulknife subclasses. But no you can't directly translate the Swordmage just as you can't really translate most of those backwards to 4e and have them do the same thing. Or a whole heap of things from 3.5 to 4e.

 

[Garthanos]

There are a number of ways to get a lot of teleports; the three that come to mind are the Monk of Shadow, the Echo Knight, and the Soulknife subclasses.

I think 2 of those didnt exist when I was looking.

Monk of Shadows?
"At 6th level, you gain the ability to step from one shadow into another. When you are in dim light or darkness, as a bonus action you can teleport up to 60 feet to an unoccupied space you can see that is also in dim light or darkness. You then have advantage on the first melee attack you make before the end of the turn."

I suppose in some games (lots of dungeon delving) that is all the time, thematically quite different

 

[Garthanos]

You could play the striker burninator wizard.

yeh sorcerers dont have the name magic of "wizard"

 

[Neonchameleon]

I think 2 of those didnt exist when I was looking.

Probably not. And comparing a fully featured edition to just the PHB and objecting that things didn't transfer was also an unfair criticism being made in 2009 of 4e. (And yes, 5e has been slow at producing things).

yeh sorcerers dont have the name magic of "wizard"

I'd say rather fluff, prime stat as intelligence rather than charisma, and some of the spells. It's not a high priority that the game absolutely needed but there is a difference between the spellbook wizard who chose to focus their learning on burning things well in combat but can cast things like invisibility and flight and the elemental pyromancer who almost is a conduit to the Plane of Fire. Both are legitimate character concepts and you can reskin either to the other but they are not the same.

 

[Garthanos]

Probably not. And comparing a fully featured edition to just the PHB and objecting that things didn't transfer was also an unfair criticism being made in 2009 of 4e. (And yes, 5e has been slow at producing things).

Right neither were out till 2020.... and I was looking in 2019. Very slow. (how many years into the game was that?)

I was looking at 5 years of development. So there is your tu quoque.

There are a number of But no you can't directly translate the Swordmage just as you can't really translate most of those backwards to 4e and have them do the same thing. Or a whole heap of things from 3.5 to 4e.

I feel they made the obvious translation rather poor, Eldritch Knight p-poor Swordmage (can't defend others with magic at all or teleport regularly) and Battlemaster similar issues to Warlord.

I'd say rather fluff, prime stat as intelligence rather than charisma

Einstein was a creative genius (and actually pretty charismatic in the classic sense too dodging certain questions poetically), he went to others when he wanted a mathematician to help create proofs to back his creative inspiration.

you can reskin either to the other but they are not the same.

I would say 4e actively didnt at first want my wizard can do EVERYTHING to be a thing till Mearles took over so yes the developers wanted Arcane Striker to be farmed out into Sorcerers and Warlocks, I very much think on purpose.

I can spend a couple feats and the right background to transform a 4e ranger into a fighter for every intent and purpose its basically a flavor difference too. (not good enough for people who wanted the name of their chain or scale using striker to be "fighter")

Just like I think my two favorite classes the Swordmages and Warlords were either impossible or a pain to build in a satisfying way in 5e and its very much seemed to be on purpose. (I know its paranoia insert smiley here). The latter because of course "Warlords cannot shout arms back on!"

Pretending roles arent real seemed to be a big thing at first for 5e... it took til November 2017 before they even had a defender able to attack anyone rushing past at level 18.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I feel they made the obvious translation rather poor, Eldritch Knight p-poor Swordmage and Battlemaster similar issues to Warlord.

Eldritch Knight wasn't really meant to be a swordmage. It was meant to be an AD&D Fighter/Magic User and a 3.X core Fighter/Wizard/Eldrich Knight (which was a patch in 3.X to make the AD&D Fighter/Magic User work). The swordmage was a far more specific class than that. And frankly the 5e Eldritch Knight was a better Eldritch Knight than the 3.X one (not a high bar).

And that may include the Defender Fighter . (And yes they eventually offered up the cavalier but its still rather easy for enemies to rush past him in quantity till maybe 18th level),

You're looking in the wrong place there. The 5e fighter gets extra feats for a reason - and the Sentinel feat makes up most of the 4e fighter's basic package; the ability to punish shifts (or disengages), the ability to punish people who attack people other than you, and the ability to flatten speeds to zero. It's a legit defender package, and you get a fighting style and subclass on top of that. It's a late start - but not that late given that 4e level 1 is about 5e level 3 and you can get this at 4th level.

Is it ever going to be as fun tactically? No. 5e is not that sort of game. But in this case it's not the defender that 5e is missing but the hordebreaker. On the other hand with multiple attacks per turn by default the 5e fighter is better at hordebreaking than a fighter that hasn't focused on hordebreaking.

and it was an active design choice that they didnt want someone to be able to thrash minions the way a fighter with rain of steel and other abilities can)

It was an active design choice that they didn't want minion rules in the game, just "bounded accuracy". One of the many many choices I disagree with.

Einstein was a creative genius (and actually pretty charismatic too dodging certain questions poetically)

So what? Just because some people have Int and Cha doesn't mean that some don't want one and some the other.

I would say 4e actively didnt at first want my wizard can do EVERYTHING to be a thing till Mearles took over so yes the developers wanted Arcane Striker to be farmed out into Sorcerers and Warlocks, I very much think on purpose.

The thing is that power selection means that you can't have a Wizard who can do EVERYTHING. You don't have the monster spellbooks. You can just make different wizard builds to do different things. And they didn't know what a controller was at first, just that they needed one and the wizard started too weak (although I agree it ended too strong).

Honestly if someone works out a striker wizard build that isn't a controller I don't care. I only really start caring if they can be a striker while keeping most of the control.

Just like I think my two favorite classes the Swordmages and Warlords were either impossible or a pain to build in a satisfying way in 5e and its very much seemed to be on purpose.

The warlord I think was on purpose. The Swordmage I don't see any malice in; it wasn't a PHB class and they had more than enough to do getting the PHB classes in there. Especially when multiple classes I'd consider far closer thematically to their 4e incarnations than to other editions (most notably the warlock, paladin, sorcerer, barbarian, rogue, and probably monk)

 

[Joshua Randall]

I've often described the Warlord as the most 4e of all 4e classes, and my preferred replacement for the Cleric in the Big Four.

(Don't get me wrong: Clerics in 4e are fine, even good by the time they got their splatbook powers. But they're not as 4e as War-freakin'-lords.)

 

[Campbell]

@Joshua Randall

Agreed. The Warlord was the centerpiece of the 4e combat narrative which is centered around the heroic rally. It also was the center piece of how teamwork worked in 4e. It basically defined the edition.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

TBH I just eyeballed the list and marked it "yes" if that class was "Essentialized" in a manner similar to the Heroes of the The Words-That-Start-With-F books.

It IS somewhat ambiguous. I mean, is Vampire an 'Essentials' class? I would say 'no', but other people claim it is (my argument is that a careful reading shows that it is a standard design class, with AEDU slots, just that many levels have only one or two power choices, technically you could take MC feats and swap them out, no special rules needed, or write additional powers, this is unlike HIGHLY essentialized classes like Slayer, but also unlike the more mildly essentialized ones like Warpriest. Then there is the Mage, OBVIOUSLY an Essentials class, as it shows up in HotFK, but ALSO clearly a pure PHB1 style AEDU class, just slightly different from the basic Wizard builds presented there.

Then you have stuff that shows up in some of the later books like Skald and Berserker. They vary from PHB1 class AEDU to varying degrees, but don't quite fit any Essentials pattern either (and the Witch is pure AEDU). You also have Elementalist, which seems quite essentialist in its design, but technically it is neither classic, nor Essentials.