D&D 4E Core 4E vs. Essentials

[Tony Vargas]

I won't disagree that, used with the spirit in which they were created, Themes could be very helpful to a player in adding just that extra bit of 'oomph' to a character background. The problem was that, in practice, most folks playing (in our area, anyway) tended to use themes as an additional layer of character optimization.

I did not find optimization a huge problem in 4e, in general, since it wasn't as execrably balanced as other editions. I have had some crazy optimizers in my games, of course, but the impact just wasn't as shattering as in 3.x - besides, to my mind 'optimization' can be an exercise in tailoring a build to concept, as much to tailoring for DPR or whatever.

Edit: to be clear, I often did find optimization to be a huge deal, in 4e, there was plenty of it to do,
if you were so inclined, plenty of players enthusiastically so inclined, and there were rewards to be eked out with sufficient system mastery. It just never dominated the whole experience 3.x/PF-style.

As a hypothetical, say there was a 5e Background (let's call it 'Nemesis') that allowed you to choose a type of opponent, and gave you an extra attack

Well, that'd be broken as all get-out, of course, since Extra Attack is such a wildly powerful feature in 5e.

It would be like giving out a 5th level wizard daily in the Wizard's Apprentice Theme. Obviously nuts. No theme did anything like that. OTOH, more literally, an 'extra attack' theme power in 4e that was an encounter and made two attacks, each against a different target, probably fine.

But it would be nice if 5e Backgrounds had features that could kick in at higher levels, it'd keep 'em more relevant & interesting.

That the granted abilities of 5E backgrounds are restricted to non-combat and RP-related effects, as appropriate for a feature that's meant to flesh out those parts of the game

They include weapon proficiencies and spells, so, not that tightly focused, but, yeah, as far as they go. Classes also (most of 'em) have plenty of non-combat-related stuff in 5e. There's really not a lot of consistency to it.

, is a sign that the 5E designers noted the flaws in theme design in 4E and decided not to include that aspect in the new design.
They were certainly popular, but popular does not automatically mean positive.

5e design was primarily about re-instating flaws! ;P And, popularity, of course.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Perhaps the height of absurdity for themes came in the Heroes of Shadow release, when vampire was released as a character class, but werewolf was released (in supplemental material included in Dragon Magazine) as a theme, fulfilling the dream of lycan/vampire fanboys the world over.

Laugh XP for this, I had no idea.

Huh. I genuinely think Themes are one of the best improvements in mid/late 4e development, and I'd keep them before I kept feats.

Interesting, I know themes became pretty popular but I felt like they were an unnecessary addition to the chargen process from day 1. The best-written ones are those that grant class skills to players who want to play a pious fighter or whatever, and as a DM I'd rather just houserule out the concept of class v. non-class skills. And I'd rather the original dev team would have dropped the concept to begin with, so I don't have to house rule it. But that's a common phenomenon in many games, and D&D is no exception: Build in a limitation, so that you can later sell ways to bypass that limitation. See the various paladin-alike classes for other alignments of prior editions, for a non-4e example. :/

Whereas with feats, I'm not gaga in love with them on either side of the screen, and obviously I object to both feat taxes and exceptionally weaksauce feats. But feats do some things that themes don't: they fill in some otherwise dead-ish levels (assigning those two +1 stat boosts is often a non-choice), they provide design space for things like proficiencies and yes, even extra languages and skills, and perhaps most importantly feats allow the mechanics to reflect a character's expanding skillset as she levels.

Feats also provide design space for circumstantial advantages that don't work well as 1st-level freebies -- for example I understand why rangers were given Prime Shot, but frankly it's one of those niggly little bonuses that doesn't work well as part of a class, theme, background, or race package -- it would have done better as a feat. (Probably with a higher bonus.) Personally as a player I prefer feats that I can buff my basic stats with and then forget about, but there are players who like tactical advantages. And since each feat is a little chunk of advantage rather than an all-or-nothing package of advantages, a feat is the perfect vehicle for a circumstantial advantage that is opted into by players who want that advantage.

Do there have to be eighteen feat slots to fill during the course of 30 level? Depends on taste. Does there have to be a metric crapton of feats to choose from? Absolutely not. But in reply to thanos02's question, yes, I do think that feats are the best way to do what they in the good cases do.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

As a hypothetical, say there was a 5e Background (let's call it 'Nemesis') that allowed you to choose a type of opponent, and gave you an extra attack (as the Extra Attack feature of the fighter) against that type of opponent which stacked with the Extra Attacks of the fighter or similar classes. *That's* exactly the damage that the more poorly-designed themes did to 4E, and it seemed the longer the idea went on, the more poorly-designed the themes became.

That sounds a lot like how Kits worked in 2E. Ninety-percent of them were just thematic, but the remaining 10% also offered a significant mechanical bonus, and those were the ones which everyone picked.

 

[MoutonRustique]

So... if we take the feats out, what -exactly- get's left in the lurch ?

- getting weapon prof
- getting armour prof
- numbers (def, att, dmg) - this seems fairly trivial to "patch"
- getting ritual prof
- getting one of the few "feat-based" play-styles
-- melee control : push, slide, trip on every attack
-- buffing some class abilities into something else (warlock)
-- ???
- ???

I am sure there's more than this... (I usually DM, I don't know all that much about the player-facing stuff)

 

[The Crimson Binome]

So... if we take the feats out, what -exactly- get's left in the lurch ?

Multiclassing is the big one, unless that's what you're talking about in buffing some class abilities into something else.

 

[Garthanos]

- getting one of the few "feat-based" play-styles
-- melee control : push, slide, trip on every attack

In order for me to like playing the ranger I needed the options for control that feats gave me....

 

[Jacob Lewis]

As evident by many posts in this thread, this is a difficult subject to broach without evoking some of the controversies that were hotly debated during the all-too-brief tenure for 4th Edition. The reason and intent behind Essentials is subject to speculation from those of us who are not part of the inner circle of developers and publishers solely responsible for producing the content. While worthy of its own discussion, it should be eschewed from this discussion which simply looks at the comparison between the two product lines--which, incidentally, deserves a brief moment of attention for clarity.

There is, in fact, a clearly defined group of products that can be classified as purely the "Essentials" brand for 4e. Each is clearly marked with the same Dungeons & Dragons logo used for previous 4e materials, and the word "Essentials" underneath. Specifically, these are the Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms, Heroes of the Fallen Lands, Rules Compendium, Dungeon Master's Kit, Monster Vault, the Starter Kit, and the three Dungeon Tile boxed sets (The Dungeon, The City, and the Wilderness). The products that came after made no visible distinction on the outside between Essentials and non-Essential lines, reverting back to just the D&D logo. But many contained design ideas and principles from both pre- and post-Essential lines. This merging of the two blurred the lines for many of us, and for the most part, was not wholly appreciated. On the one hand, it was a relief to see that this new direction would not invalidate everything that we have bought into before. But at the same time, it was not a seamless fit.

So when we look at the 'stages' of 4th Edition products, there are actually three. Everything before the introduction of the Essentials line (i.e. up to and including the Dark Sun books) are what we commonly consider the "core" game, which was first introduced. Essentials itself is the small group of products labeled as such, and defines the dividing line. What came after is the fuzzy, gray era, the post-Essentials stuff.

I think it was rare to hear anyone speak up on how great it was to have books like Heroes of the Fey Wild because it offered options for both Essentials and the Core version of the rules. More often than not, it seemed that the general consensus really liked the Essential-style of Core classes, like the Barbarian (i.e. Berserker) and the Bard (i.e. Skald), more than the books as a whole. So despite WotC's intention of keeping both styles current and compatible, a lot of people saw the significant distinction between the two styles and often favored one or the other, but not necessarily both.

Which (finally!) brings me to the topic at hand. I think a lot of the points previously made are spot on, so I won't repeat them again. 4th Edition accumulated a massive amount of material and options in only a short amount of time even before Essentials arrived. The Essentials demonstrated how to streamline those options into more meaningful, manageable choices, which I found very appealing. That said, the Core design was born of rigid structure and balance with the goal of ensuring every player at the table would have the same experience regardless of character choices. Maybe not always successful, but the intent was there.

Good luck on your project! I will probably begin working on mine soon.

 

[Tony Vargas]

More often than not, it seemed that the general consensus really liked the Essential-style of Core classes, like the Barbarian (i.e. Berserker) and the Bard (i.e. Skald), more than the books as a whole.

I'm not sure I'd even call those Essentials-style sub-classes, I tend to think of the Essentials Martial Classes & HotEC Elemental Sorcerer as the defining examples of AEDU-aberrant/unbalanceable class designs that established the Essentials Style. The Berserker & Skald were 4e-style, with only minor deviations from AEDU, the mixed-source innovation (HotFK Rangers) wasn't great, but the Berserker's role-switching was interesting & unique.

The Essentials demonstrated how to streamline those options into more meaningful, manageable choices, which I found very appealing.

Essentials took a consistent structure and needlessly complicated it. It undermined balance, introducing trap options. It was only more manageable in the sense of offering fewer options.

That said, the Core design was born of rigid consistent structure and balance with the goal of ensuring every player at the table would have the same an enjoyable experience regardless of character choices. Maybe not always successful, but the intent was there.

More successful at achieving class balance than D&D has been before or since, FWIW (we are talking a very low bar).

 

[Obryn]

Interesting, I know themes became pretty popular but I felt like they were an unnecessary addition to the chargen process from day 1. The best-written ones are those that grant class skills to players who want to play a pious fighter or whatever, and as a DM I'd rather just houserule out the concept of class v. non-class skills. And I'd rather the original dev team would have dropped the concept to begin with, so I don't have to house rule it. But that's a common phenomenon in many games, and D&D is no exception: Build in a limitation, so that you can later sell ways to bypass that limitation. See the various paladin-alike classes for other alignments of prior editions, for a non-4e example. :/

I'm wondering if you're confusing Themes and Backgrounds, because it sounds like you're talking about Backgrounds, here.

Essentials took a consistent structure and needlessly complicated it. It undermined balance, introducing trap options. It was only more manageable in the sense of offering fewer options. More successful at achieving class balance than D&D has been before or since, FWIW (we are talking a very low bar).

I dunno, man - I still haven't seen balance issues while mixing and matching all kinds of classes*. As I mentioned upthread, I don't make a distinction in my own games. Each class is its own thing; take the one you like.



* Other than the Bladesinger, which was just terrible no matter which way you slice it. Binder and Vampire may be terrible too, but I have never seen either in play. But the ... let's see ... Thief, Scout, Hunter, Berserker, Knight, Hexblade, and Champion have all been great, and their players have had a good time with them.

 

[Morphile]

"at will" could probably have been something you can add to an attack that's situational. This would have allowed the "I hit it with my axe!" w/o having to narrow the options. As many have pointed out, as play progressed, most characters would really have an at-will they used, and another that sort of ... stood there looking awkward.

Personally, I've considered building classes around that idea. Pile of at-will effects that can apply to all abilities that involve some particular action. It'd actually work in 5e or 3.5/PF better than 4e, as 4e doesn't have coherent and intricate categories of action to apply to. Pathfinder has standard action attacks be a single specific type of action, which is why Vital Strike only applies to default attacks. 3.5 has a sizeable pile of things to work with, with Trips, Grapples, Charges, Partial Charges, which are only usable when you are restricted to single actions per turn, moves, double-moves, runs and more. Pathfinder inherits almost all of this. 5e, meanwhile, has Attack, Cast a Spell, Dash, Disengage, Dodge, Help, Hide, Ready, Search and Use an Object as defined actions.

Actually, what kind of action categorization does 4e have? From the Quick Start Rules, I can see that abilities are divided into Attack abilities, which is subdivided into Melee, Ranged, Close and Area, and Utility abilities, which don't seem to have subdivisions. Action-type-wise, it mentions Standard, Move, Minor and Free actions, with Opportunity, Immediate and triggered-Free Actions on other people's turns. Thinking about what I've been considering, one of the most basic ones, mechanically, would be turning Melee attacks into Close attacks, basically turning any Melee attack into a cleave, all the way up to valuable Daily abilities that happen to be Melee attacks by default.

Due to the entire idea being to have abilities apply to other attacks you make, it would go very far overboard with Hybridizing a character, on account of the entire setup being about stacking abilities atop eachother.

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.)

Basic numbers feats are a big fat no. Feats should always be differentiating a character. If your system needs feats to provide basic numbers, those numbers should be provided in ways that differentiate the character. If it's needed to bring ranged up to melee, have it differentiate by means of making you choose extra attacks or stronger single attacks. If you need a feat to make blasters remain relevant when immunities spring up, it should be choosing between stuff like Lord of the Uttercold and Born of Three Thunders instead of basic energy substitution, boosting your character's theme and versatility. Same really goes for martial feats, but you can actually handle most of that with hit locations to have Martials get options without any feats or even class features.