Essentials classes and older stuff

[Rahlious]

How do you folks feel about all the feats/items that affect basic attacks and their interaction with Essentials classes? Here's a couple of examples.

ex1: A Slayer hopes to charge all the time and then his Avalanche Hammer is going to be amazing!
ex2: A Knight with Hammer Shock will dish out Rattling with the MBA's he makes on his turn + all his OAs + all his atacks due to his aura.

It doesn't seem fair and that's why I'm not arguing with my DM about it... he's not allowing some stuff like the above examples. BUT, what I'd really like to know, is how other 4E players feel about these sorts of combinations?

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

As a DM, I'm pretty okay with it... but then I don't just hand out items willy-nilly. That said, I don't mind when my groups are powerful, because then I can pull out all the stops and they (generally) don't complain when they get hurt. Plus you can do cool stuff like throw several encounters at them without a short rest, go days without extended rests, etc, and generally it will work out.

I also don't like to ban things outright, because I know how frustrating that can be as a player. Seriously - as a DM - you should never really have to worry about players being too strong; it's when your group has a few that are really weak that you begin to have problems. YMMV, but that's been my experience.

 

[the Jester]

I think it's fine.

A 4e "Classic" pc won't benefit from those feats as often, but they have more options in terms of power use. Their added versatility makes up the difference imhom and ime.

 

[Pentius]

I've yet to be in or run a campaign where the essentials stuff was banned, and it's been fine. Sometimes someone finds a specific thing they can get really good mileage out of, but that mileage doesn't seem to be much more than that of combos that already existed pre-essentials.

 

[mneme]

I think it's all fine...except charging. The game over-supports charging--to the point where a high level -wizard- build for charging might do more damage than a mostly optimized same level striker who isn't. Not to mention, you know, classes that actually are suited for charging all the time, like a Slayer, or worse, a Thief.

So I'd say it's certainly reasonable for the the GM to make it hard/impossible for players to assemble full charge sets, as they're over-supported, and while having -some- charging support is fine (as there is a cost to charging), there's enough in the game to overpower other options.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I like Essentials pretty well, once I got over my initial distaste.

Unfortunately, Essentials can combine with older (and even newer) stuff and result in broken combos. For instance, the Knight's "everything is a basic attack" philosophy can become problematic if backed up by a warlord (which was designed when melee basic attacks were always weak) or with items/backgrounds/whatever that boosts basic attacks. A Knight using Bracers of Striking probably isn't broken, but if he has a background that boosts that and another item that boosts that and a Dragon Magazine race that boosts that, etc, it can get out of hand. The player and DM need to be reasonable about what is allowed.

I'm pretty sure a wizard (arcanist) and Essentials mage can swap encounter and daily spells without causing any kind of balance problem.

 

[chitzk0i]

I like Essentials pretty well, once I got over my initial distaste.

Unfortunately, Essentials can combine with older (and even newer) stuff and result in broken combos. For instance, the Knight's "everything is a basic attack" philosophy can become problematic if backed up by a warlord (which was designed when melee basic attacks were always weak) or with items/backgrounds/whatever that boosts basic attacks. A Knight using Bracers of Striking probably isn't broken, but if he has a background that boosts that and another item that boosts that and a Dragon Magazine race that boosts that, etc, it can get out of hand. The player and DM need to be reasonable about what is allowed.

I have yet to see a background that gives a bonus to basic attacks. If he's got another item, well, he's already got an item bonus, so it won't do too much good. And, if anything, a race from Dragon Magazine would be worse for this exercise because it most likely wouldn't have a basic-attack-boosting feat available.

You might worry about a warlord handing out basic attacks to a slayer, but that's not one of the dominant warlord strategies.

If you have some specific broken combo in mind, I would be interested in seeing it.

 

[Tony Vargas]

How do you folks feel about all the feats/items that affect basic attacks and their interaction with Essentials classes?

They're clearly an issue. It's debateable (and heavily dependent on campaign style) if they'd help make up for the lack of dailies that the martial basic-attack spammers have to deal with. Then there's the Bladesinger. :shrug:

In general, I think, the pre-Essentials and post-Essentials takes on character creation, while they produce character that are mechanically compatible in a technical sense, work better if used separately.

Selectively banning some pre-E from a mostly Essentials+ game is not an ideal solution, either, though. Your DM might spot some problematic things, but leave others in, exacerbating balance problems.


Ultimately, you have to trust your DM to balance his own campaign. 4e made that task a lot easier, and the addition of Essentials+ has made it somewhat harder, again. Compared to trying to balance 3.x or AD&D, though, it's still pretty do-able.

 

[Neonchameleon]

How do you folks feel about all the feats/items that affect basic attacks and their interaction with Essentials classes? Here's a couple of examples.

ex1: A Slayer hopes to charge all the time and then his Avalanche Hammer is going to be amazing!
ex2: A Knight with Hammer Shock will dish out Rattling with the MBA's he makes on his turn + all his OAs + all his atacks due to his aura.

It doesn't seem fair and that's why I'm not arguing with my DM about it... he's not allowing some stuff like the above examples. BUT, what I'd really like to know, is how other 4E players feel about these sorts of combinations?

I've never found anything other than a charge build to be a problem in play - although I haven't seen a warlord heavy party. Where the Hammer Shock fighter scores, the classic Knight has dailies like Rain of Steel and doesn't have to spend a feat to get either Come and Get It or Rain of Blows.

Charge builds - yeaaaaah.

 

[Dice4Hire]

My group has decided to avoid the whole problem by not using Essentials, and overall I like it.

There is some good stuff in there, but Essentials went a bit too far for me and my groups, so it is blanket banned.

The only thing I think could be broken with essentials is the basic attack cheese. Basic melee attacks got a huge powerup with Essentials.