D&D 4E Let's Talk About 4E On Its Own Terms [+]

[cavalier973]

season one of “Acquisitions, Inc.” is the first time that Mike Kruhulic (sp?) a.k.a. “Jim Darkmagic” first played D&D, and the listener gets to learn along with Mike the rules of the game, because he isn’t afraid to ask questions. It’s unfortunate that they only recorded the audio.

He asks why the PCs wouldn’t always be making perception checks, and that’s when Chris Perkins explains passive perception. Perkins also says that if the player imagines his character as somewhat paranoid, then it would make sense to be continually making perception checks.

 

[Voadam]

Huh - never read the Essentials books, we were enjoying standard 4e too much to change things up. But I don't often hear of downsides to Essentials - this one is interestig

I heard a bunch of complaints about essentials seeking to woo people who hated 4e by turning its back on the AEDU designs that made 4e balanced and hum for a great daily resource experience.

Whether essentials classes are an enhancement or a detriment depends on how much you like the daily paradigm of AEDU or whether you preferred the ability to do more encounter and at will stuff and not sweat daily resource management as much. I was in the latter.

My experience was also though that most everybody thought the monster design and adventures just kept getting better.

 

[Red Castle]

I heard a bunch of complaints about essentials seeking to woo people who hated 4e by turning its back on the AEDU designs that made 4e balanced and hum for a great daily resource experience.

Whether essentials classes are an enhancement or a detriment depends on how much you like the daily paradigm of AEDU or whether you preferred the ability to do more encounter and at will stuff and not sweat daily resource management as much. I was in the latter.

My experience was also though that most everybody thought the monster design and adventures just kept getting better.

I don’t think Essentials is bad, just not to my personnal liking. I always loved the variety of powers forceach class that the 4e structured brought, so I must say I was a little bit disappointed when I saw that the fighter was back to doing melee basic attacks, had no daily and instead of gaining more encounter powers, just got to use his one more often… same deal with the elemental sorcerer, I wanted to love it, I loved the concept!… but it felt like it would just spam the same spell over and over again…

But, the essential line brought some good new powers and feats and more importantly, the Monster Vault and Threat to the Nentir Vale which are both just great!

 

[Old Fezziwig]

I like how 4e warlords are so awesome that they can heal you, even it's by yelling at you.

“Rub some dirt in it!”

“Walk it off; walk it off!”

My dwarf warlord's favorite was an exasperated grumble, "You're doing it wrong!"

 

[cavalier973]

I like how a 4e fighter can step to the middle of the room, widen his stance, grip his sword with both hands, and say, “Fourth Edition is the best edition of Dungeons and Dragons!” (Or, alternately, “Fourth Edition wasn’t ‘real’ D&D!”) and all enemies within range will rush at him. There isn’t even an attack against will or anything.*


*The errata that changed “Come and Get It” to “STR vs Will” instead of STR vs AC” was a mistake. The pull was an effect of the power; it wasn’t the attack. The attack was against enemies that were pulled adjacent to the fighter.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

*The errata that changed “Come and Get It” to “STR vs Will” instead of STR vs AC” was a mistake. The pull was an effect of the power; it wasn’t the attack. The attack was against enemies that were pulled adjacent to the fighter.

no, see, the reason they changed it to will is because it represented being able to make your enemies so mad that they completely disregarded their defenses, making AC irrelevant, obviously.

 

[pemerton]

The errata that changed “Come and Get It” to “STR vs Will” instead of STR vs AC” was a mistake. The pull was an effect of the power; it wasn’t the attack. The attack was against enemies that were pulled adjacent to the fighter.

100% this. That was one of the few bits of errata that we ignored.

 

[cavalier973]

The thing I like about the Essentials slayer is that, when built properly, the slayer, at first level, can hit an AC of 15 with a roll of “2”.

The advantage of Essentials classes is the reduction by one of the number of ability scores that fuel the characters’ powers. For example, the core cleric has powers that rely on STR, WIS, and CHA. The Essentials Warpriest powers rely on WIS and CON. It makes it a little easier to build an effective character.

Effective characters are fun.

 

[Kannik]

I noticed a similar thing with the Entertainment skill in The Troubleshooters.

Hello to a fellow Troubleshooters enthusiast! Not that I've had a chance to play/run it yet, but it is on the docket for this coming year...

Whether essentials classes are an enhancement or a detriment depends on how much you like the daily paradigm of AEDU or whether you preferred the ability to do more encounter and at will stuff and not sweat daily resource management as much. I was in the latter.

same deal with the elemental sorcerer, I wanted to love it, I loved the concept!… but it felt like it would just spam the same spell over and over again…

I like 'em both, with only a slight caveat that some of the E classes were still half baked in terms of their execution (and maybe one or two it is debatable whether they were needed or if an addition to the O classes would have worked fine). On the whole I loved the elementalist -- a bit of a one-lightning pony perhaps, but for that kind of character it mostly made sense and there's really only a couple of things I would have made available to flesh out some options. The bigger problem was getting things from the regular Sorcerer where there wasn't necessarily enough to stay within the pure lightning concept. (Probably much less of an issue if you were playing a fire elementalist.)

 

[Kannik]

The thing I like about the Essentials slayer is that, when built properly, the slayer, at first level, can hit an AC of 15 with a roll of “2”.

The advantage of Essentials classes is the reduction by one of the number of ability scores that fuel the characters’ powers. For example, the core cleric has powers that rely on STR, WIS, and CHA. The Essentials Warpriest powers rely on WIS and CON. It makes it a little easier to build an effective character.

Effective characters are fun.

There are some things that was learned as time went on (no surprise and no slight to the designers -- that's to be expected) that got 'fixed' in some of the E class designs. It'd be fun to do a revised 4e with those also adjusted for the O classes.