Essentials missing simple casters

[The Human Target]

Ummm...

My 6 year old daughter has no problem running a mobile Rogue in full 4e.
My 8 year old son has no problem running a full 4e wizard.
My wife has no problem running a full 4e fighter.
...
many more younger kids and experienced adults are playing just fine. Often with little or no explanation.

Umm.. This is simple. Try explaining AD&D to them.

Further proof that intelligence skips a generation.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Condesension aside, yes, 4e was pretty simple. It has a single class progression, a common structure. I've seen it deeply confuse experienced gamers, because they keep looking for complexity that simply isn't there. That's why I was surprised by Essentials trying to be 'simpler.' I mean, there's only so simple you can get before you're playing candyland or something.

'Simpler' wasn't really what they meant, though. As has been pointed out. Essentials is retro, and in earlier versions of the game, some classes were 'simpler' than (inferior to) others. Specifically, non-casters were simple compared to casters - and casters could be more thoroughly abused to achieve game-breaking power. While having mechanically different classes with varying degrees of complexity delivers 'simplicity' to a few builds, it makes the whole system more complex - more daunting to new players trying to take it all in, and more amenable to 'rewarding system mastery' (powergaming, optimization, rampant munchkinism, whatever you want to call it).

 

[karolusb]

I can see what you are saying about play, but I am not sure the simplicity always needs to happen in play.

Clerics boil down to 1 choice. Storm or Sun (personally sun seems noteworthily better to me, but most people I have seen play and prefer storm). They are a bit simpler than thieves to make.

By comparison the Character builder cleric has 10 at will choices, including some strength and wisdom choices, a ranged weapon attack, melee powers, implement powers. 12 encounter choicese with a similar spread of effects, many rider effects, 4 non-damaging choices. Healers Mercy?

Lots of choices can be overwhelming, and many of those choices in existing materials are traps. Essentials gives two very simple builds with few choices, but all of those choices are rock solid.

I can't think of any edition of D&D where wizards were truly simple, 4E is as close as it gets. Even so the essentials wizard gives a pretty narrow array of choices, with nothing that seems like a trap to me (having only played essentials at 1st level of course). If you take the essentials wizard, and open it to the full spectrum of choices it is by no means simpler, but then you made a choice towards complexity.

 

[Quickleaf]

That's great so many folks feel 4e is easy for new players. Obviously it's not a universal truth, so stop beating me over the head with it. That observation I made of my group isn't a judgment of their intelligence nor is it an invitation for your judgment. And I'm aware that casters have never been "simple" in the past. My post was about the possibility of simpler caster classes, that essentials is the perfect time to make casters more accessible... an opportunity that Wizards seem to be passing up (for now).

 

[Klaus]

That's great so many folks feel 4e is easy for new players. Obviously it's not a universal truth, so stop beating me over the head with it. That observation I made of my group isn't a judgment of their intelligence nor is it an invitation for your judgment. And I'm aware that casters have never been "simple" in the past. My post was about the possibility of simpler caster classes, that essentials is the perfect time to make casters more accessible... an opportunity that Wizards seem to be passing up (for now).

Back on track a bit, I think the Essentials hunter ranger, being Martial/Primal may be a good "quasi-spellcaster" option. We still have to wait on the cavalier paladin and the hexblade warlock, though.

In core 4e, the easiest way to deal with sorcerers is to just take the powers that match the power source.

In Essentials, we got the Pyromancer in Dragon for the mage wizard. Maybe focusing only on fire spells makes the character-building easier?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That's great so many folks feel 4e is easy for new players. Obviously it's not a universal truth, so stop beating me over the head with it. That observation I made of my group isn't a judgment of their intelligence nor is it an invitation for your judgment. And I'm aware that casters have never been "simple" in the past. My post was about the possibility of simpler caster classes, that essentials is the perfect time to make casters more accessible... an opportunity that Wizards seem to be passing up (for now).

Honestly I think what people are suggesting is that making a simpler fighter is something with precedent, every previous-e fighter was a lot simpler than the 4e version. There was a concept there to fall back on for the Essentials fighters and other martial classes. There has never really been a simple spell caster in any edition. Nobody really knows HOW to make such a thing.

Truthfully I personally have no idea how you would make such a thing myself. I mean yeah, you could make a class that has nothing but 3 powers. I don't think it would be all that entertaining myself. It might work in the same way that Slayer WORKS, but then it is already arguable that the Slayer isn't that much easier to run, if any, than the 4e GW Fighter he's basically emulating. I just think it would be extremely hard to capture the essence of the erudite wizard who shapes magic to his bidding with 3 powers, a single 'booster' power, a couple utilities and cantrips. Either the powers he gets are going to be EXTREMELY open-ended or else he's going to be a bow ranger with different fluff basically. Since they also ditched rituals in Essentials there's not even THAT as a fallback for doing more interesting wizardly stuff.

More than that I don't feel like power selection per-se is the main point of complexity with 4e to start with. I think it arises from a number of places. There are tons of feats, tons of ways feats, power selection, implement selection, ability score allocation, etc all interact that make build choices complex. On top of that there's the issue with the tactical complexity of the game and the plethora of different conditions and creative ways all these moving parts can interact to make things complicated.

In short I'm just not sure there is ever going to be something like a 'simple wizard' that in any sense captures the flavor of wizards very well. Maybe someone will come along and prove that incorrect, but I'm skeptical. Even the 4e Sorcerer still has a lot of choices and ways to use his abilities that gives him a magical feel and that's really about as simple as it gets.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Honestly I think what people are suggesting is that making a simpler fighter is something with precedent, every previous-e fighter was a lot simpler than the 4e version. There was a concept there to fall back on for the Essentials fighters and other martial classes. There has never really been a simple spell caster in any edition. Nobody really knows HOW to make such a thing.

A nice way of putting it.
3.x did try to deliver simpler casters. Sorcerer were simpler /in play/ than wizards or Clerics - level up was time for some nail-bitingly tough choices, but in play they were pretty straightforward. The Warlock and War-mage were further disconnected from the daily mechanic, making them simpler.

A simplified Warlock that just tossed Eldritch Blast all day - modified by a small selection of minor-action curses, and a few encounter 'Invocations' (I think they were called) and utilities - would be entirely workable, and more like the 3.5 Warlock than the current 4e incarnation.

More than that I don't feel like power selection per-se is the main point of complexity with 4e to start with. I think it arises from a number of places. There are tons of feats, tons of ways feats, power selection, implement selection, ability score allocation, etc all interact that make build choices complex. On top of that there's the issue with the tactical complexity of the game and the plethora of different conditions and creative ways all these moving parts can interact to make things complicated.

True. Even the most simplistic new Essentials classes still face some tactical challenges and complex choices in play.

Simplifying chargen /is/ good thing, though. It makes it easier for new players to create their own characters - and you're more likely to get excited about a character that is /your/ creation than a pregen.

 

[UHF]

I apologize if I appear to be a knob. That wasn't my aim.

I don't know how you can make it simpler... Savage Worlds maybe?

I guess my unit of measure was how long it took me to grasp AD&D. Compared to that, 4e is a snap. I've had little kids correct me on their second time playing 'cause they start reading the cards. ("This power does that... ")

My six year old daughter did the Water Walk Ritual they other day... She decided she couldn't make the jump across the river in HS2.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I apologize if I appear to be a knob. That wasn't my aim.

Thanks for the apology, I think everyone can draw a line under that now.


To the OP: I don't think Essentials was every supposed to produce a simple caster; the intention of HoFL seems to be to map more closely onto more traditional D&D classes, but with additional fun and options. Thus the fighter and rogue classes don't get encounter and daily attacks, and mostly use basic attacks modified by their stances or movement tricks (which gives a neat new dynamic to them). Meanwhile the cleric and wizard are much more the traditional caster types; mages in particular having much more of a spellbook theme to them than 4e wizards, and have a pretty decent kind of specialisation integrated in too.

Cheers

 

[Quickleaf]

Thanks UHF. Maybe the issue is that a group of our players don't know or care about the rules beyond the most basic elements of their characters. Coincidentally they're all ethnomusicologist grad students, speak 3 or 4 languages, and are amazing musicians. They're all around bright women and a blast to game with. But they often forget the difference between burst and blast, need to be reminded about ongoing conditions and when to make saving throws, aren't sure how many actions of which type they've taken and definitely don't understand the down-trading of action types, sometimes forget they've already used an encounter/daily power, mis-read the battle grid, consistently need to be reminded about circumstantial modifiers even ones their PC is providing, and the list goes on. It doesn't matter how many times the rules are explained or that we've been playing 4e for a year. The 3 of them spend much more time on their turns than the other 4 players and most of that time is choosing a power. Thing is they like magic - they're playing a sorcerer, a druid, and a runepriest (admitedly a complex class). I was hoping Essentials would provide easier more intuitive caster classes for them, but I realize that was never the aim of the Essentials line. I think part of the disconnect is the interaction between rules and narrative...how magic works in the game doesn't reflect magic as they understand it from fantasy literature or movies. Honestly we're trying every trick under the sun to make it easier for them, but I'm at a loss. The only thing I can think of now are easier classes... that don't exist.