D&D 4E Core 4E vs. Essentials

[Garthanos]

[MENTION=15684]Imruphel[/MENTION] definitely doesn't believe in adding honey to his arsenic

 

[Obryn]

Yeah, I just use everything. I have found that classes from all levels of complexity work just dandy in play, together. Even stuff that looks broken at first blush - like Warlords' interactions with Basic Attackers - aren't really a problem.

I don't even really look at it as a separate thing. It's just more 4e content, with all errata included.

In my own games, I...
* Use all classes and subclasses and races from all sources (in the CBLoaded offline builder)
* Use 3rd-party material as appropriate (specifically Zeitgeist themes and Paragon Paths) with the note that it's harder to use in the Builder
* Use Inherent Bonuses from Dark Sun/DMG2, plant interesting/thematic items, and just level any magic items with the party's inherent bonus level.
* Effectively use Item Rarity from Essentials, but practically just don't deal with item creation and definitely don't include item optimization for stuff like "charge kits".
* Use the 1st Level Damage Forever calculations
* Use the Rules Compendium when in doubt, which it honestly rarely is.

Now, what does frustrate me about the simplified classes is that they did nothing to cut down on the real option bloat - feats. Picking one of a dozen powers is trivial compared to picking one of hundreds of feats.

e: For real, the power point classes - especially the Psion - are much worse-designed than the simplified E-Classes.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Now, what does frustrate me about the simplified classes is that they did nothing to cut down on the real option bloat - feats. Picking one of a dozen powers is trivial compared to picking one of hundreds of feats.

Yeah. Expertise was a feat tax that was just too powerful and too bland. Solution? Make it inconsistently more powerful depending on the weapon group, so it'll be less bland.

...OK, maybe [MENTION=15684]Imruphel[/MENTION] has a point.

For real, the power point classes - especially the Psion - are much worse-designed than the simplified E-Classes.

They're both inconsistent with the core design and imbalanced. I suppose the Psionic classes were a somewhat-botched attempt at varying the AEDU structure without sacrificing balance, while the E-classes (the martial E-classses and the Mage, at the opposite extremes) were a successful attempt at edging back towards caster supremacy (5e of course, being far more successful in that regard).

 

[MoutonRustique]

Here's an insane dream :

- A WotC intern would have been told : "Here buddy, sift through the material, take a good long look at the CO boards, and trim this list of feats down to 20 per tier per class. Hum... add another 5 per race per tier and 10 "general" per tier. When you've got all that, find them in the CB, save that as a campaign file and we'll upload that to our subscribers. So... Get crackin' Boyo!

But on to the actual topic.

For my part, the greatest lesson to learn here is how much presentation (as a whole) really, really matters! You'll be hard-pressed to find someone that finds the Essentials stuff to be bad in-and-off itself for "objective" reasons. Parts of it, of course - hell, I can't think of anything there isn't some part of I don't like... But even then, the way it was presented, the context of its arrival, all those things that spoke of the intent (real or imagined) turned a good deal of people against it.

So, if you're building something for others, make sure you're "saying" something they want to here. The old phrase "We don't know what we want" is very much true. The reverse is also important. You can just look at the myriad of threads on forums where people argue nonsensical positions and contradict their own axioms.

Note that I'm not talking about a difference in preferences - those are valid, but I've seen quite a few say they want X, but then go on to say that A, B, C, and D are completely unacceptable - but then A, B, C, and D are integral parts of X...

 

[Obryn]

Yeah. Expertise was a feat tax that was just too powerful and too bland. Solution? Make it inconsistently more powerful depending on the weapon group, so it'll be less bland.

...OK, maybe [MENTION=15684]Imruphel[/MENTION] has a point.

Yeah, Expertise should have just been rolled into the character math. (The upside is that it gives you one less feat you need to actually think about!)

They're both inconsistent with the core design and imbalanced. I suppose the Psionic classes were a somewhat-botched attempt at varying the AEDU structure without sacrificing balance, while the E-classes (the martial E-classses and the Mage, at the opposite extremes) were a successful attempt at edging back towards caster supremacy (5e of course, being far more successful in that regard).

I haven't found too many balance issues with the simplified E-classes; we have a Thief in my Level 30 game that's still sailing along juuuust dandy. (Having a passive always-on Stealth of 46 probably helps, mind you, but...)

But with the Psion... It's really terrible that their optimal behavior is to spam Dishearten Aug 2. Which you get at Level 1 and never change out. Once you're throwing a -8 or so onto the enemy's attack roll, you might as well just have an at-will AoE stun effect.

A lot of this can - IMO - be solved by removing anything that gives another +/- [stat mod] to a d20 roll and changing it to a fixed number. The target numbers are already fixed relative to level, so why should the bonus or penalty need to scale? Any 4.5e should have fixed this. (You know, there's an idea for a solid house rule. Change it to a fixed +/-4 if it's linked to your primary stat, or +/-3 if it's a secondary stat.)

 

[Tony Vargas]

I haven't found too many balance issues with the simplified E-classes; we have a Thief in my Level 30 game that's still sailing along juuuust dandy.

It helps that they were mostly Strikers. The Striker role is very straightforward. I have Pixie Thieves and a Hexblade in an epic level campaign, the Theives were noticing a lack of 'bring it' options when everyone else was unloading (they usually just backstab away, so it's SoP, not A game), so I made sure they got some nice item dailies they could pull out. The Hexblade has been perplexed by what he feels is somewhat un-even advancement and recently even a 'dead' level. I'm not sure what's up with that, I don't see it, in theory...

But with the Psion... It's really terrible that their optimal behavior is to spam Dishearten Aug 2. Which you get at Level 1 and never change out.

It's an unsuccessful design, but it's still spamming, a degenerate mode of play, which is exactly what the daililess E-classes do, by successful design.

A lot of this can - IMO - be solved by removing anything that gives another +/- [stat mod] to a d20 roll and changing it to a fixed number. The target numbers are already fixed relative to level, so why should the bonus or penalty need to scale?

Heh. If you toss the Expertise feat taxes and Essentials feats in general, PC numbers 'fall behind' the monsters at very high level - and those stat-scaling bonuses/penalties from leaders/controllers more than make up for it when it counts. It was a delicate dance that Expertise &c disrupted early and was never quite brought back in step.

Any 4.5e should have fixed this. )

Save penalties, OTOH, definitely needed a lid kept on them, for the most part. (Near auto-success/failure on a single save due to a stat-mod leader buff or controller debuff doesn't sound bad - the problem was when you could extend a penalty like that into a protracted lock-down.) I'm sure the psion would have gotten fixed up like the Orbizard was, if WotC hadn't gotten allergic to errata in the run of Essentials.

 

[thanson02]

I disagree with the categorization you've used.

ONLY the softcover material is 'Essentials'. All the hardcover books which came after them (plus I guess BOVD which is admittedly not a hardcover, but its a pretty minor book too) may be 'influenced' by Essentials and often provide options for use WITH Essentials you cannot say that they ARE Essentials material. There's a lot in them that really doesn't relate to Essentials. Also, since the Wizard (Mage) really doesn't follow any specific design concept of Essentials and a LOT of later stuff is wizard options, that kinda means the impact of Essentials in any design sense is even more limited.

Well, I could have said Pre and Post Mike Mearls, But I figured that this would have been easier. There a great options in all the Hero books and they are all a mix of different stuff. I was just trying to get some basic info and find what people liked and didn't, what they found worked and what didn't.

Frankly I think 'core' 4e simply offered too many picky little options for players to have to sift through. Its not JUST that there are 1000's of feats and powers (actually 10's of thousands, but who's really counting) but it requires some real delving into the game to see how to accomplish a lot of builds.

E-classes simply got it wrong by going too far in the other direction, where they did go too far as in Slayer. Some classes are not so bad, like the Warpriest stuff, which simply lacks enough options. In essence they simply went too far the other way, and even then failed to do so consistently (where is the simple wizard?).

Post-Essentials material, while uneven, often hit a pretty decent middle point. The HotEC sorcerer variant is pretty nice for instance.

Essentials was both too shallow and too big a set of changes. It abandoned 4e material that should have been extended, fuddled with things that worked fine, and changed things in ways that weren't really improvements for the most part. Where it DID improve, it was too much at the expense of what came before.

In terms of playing them though, I would never try to draw a line. I think if you're working on some sort of 'heatbreaker' then you need to consider ALL the different things that 4e brought to the table, pick and choose, and then bend them to your needs.

I agree with much of what you mentioned. There a lot of really good options that came out. I also liked the Warpriest as a option for a Cleric, although I also thought that how they broke down the Warpriest options might have been a good idea for Cleric Domain Specializations that could have been accessible to all Cleric Builds. Like I said, I am just collecting info to see what folks liked and didn't.

 

[thanson02]

Yeah, Expertise should have just been rolled into the character math. (The upside is that it gives you one less feat you need to actually think about!)


I haven't found too many balance issues with the simplified E-classes; we have a Thief in my Level 30 game that's still sailing along juuuust dandy. (Having a passive always-on Stealth of 46 probably helps, mind you, but...)

But with the Psion... It's really terrible that their optimal behavior is to spam Dishearten Aug 2. Which you get at Level 1 and never change out. Once you're throwing a -8 or so onto the enemy's attack roll, you might as well just have an at-will AoE stun effect.

A lot of this can - IMO - be solved by removing anything that gives another +/- [stat mod] to a d20 roll and changing it to a fixed number. The target numbers are already fixed relative to level, so why should the bonus or penalty need to scale? Any 4.5e should have fixed this. (You know, there's an idea for a solid house rule. Change it to a fixed +/-4 if it's linked to your primary stat, or +/-3 if it's a secondary stat.)

So here is a general question. Do you think that 4E needed feats to begin with? Obviously they used the feat system to compensate for math issues, but if they would have play-tested enough to fix these things from the start, do you think the game benefited by having feats in there?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

So here is a general question. Do you think that 4E needed feats to begin with? Obviously they used the feat system to compensate for math issues, but if they would have play-tested enough to fix these things from the start, do you think the game benefited by having feats in there?

In the beginning, it provided a useful conceptual design space for any ability that transcended a single race or class. At a minimum, they needed a place to make ritual casting and various weapon and armor proficiencies available to classes that didn't start with them.

It didn't need to be a feats system. They could have done something like a "universal" class, and had multi-classing rules that let everyone access powers from there, but feats were already a known quantity so it was probably easier to adapt that way.

 

[Obryn]

So here is a general question. Do you think that 4E needed feats to begin with? Obviously they used the feat system to compensate for math issues, but if they would have play-tested enough to fix these things from the start, do you think the game benefited by having feats in there?

Hm, good question. Yes and no.

I think feats are great when they are fitting into a specific design space where they are helping to flesh more detailed concepts out of a more generic base. But I can't draw a bright line. Like, we can just pretty much scratch out all of the must-have and necessary math feats, because those could just as easily be part of the basic character progression. And we can scratch out all of the terrible ones, because nobody actually needed those in the first place. So what's left?

To me, it's stuff like the Fighting Style feats, Multiclass feats, Bloodlines, and so on. You probably don't need like 16 of them over 30 levels, is the thing. (Downside? You now have dead levels with no interesting choices. But the e-Classes already had those, and honestly so many of the feats are forced choices already I am not sure what'd be lost.)