Essentials missing simple casters

[UHF]

Mind you, I remember the arcanist being universally panned at the time, as an unbalanced afterthought, so I'm not sure that it would be too good a model to follow!

Cheers

Yeah... but Iron Heroes was also a recalibration of the 3.5 game. Namely hit points and combat abilities for characters and monsters. (It looks suspiciously like 4e under the hood.)

If you dropped an Arcanist into a 3.5 campaign, he'd rock compared to a Wizard or other class. On the other hand, the Arcanist doesn't stand out hugely compared to other Iron Heroes.

I think the Arcanist would be somewhat underwhelming in 4e, and possibly needing a little tinkering. (Reduce starting power points... but allow bursts earlier.)

 

[mneme]

That's just not how you'ld do a simplified arcanist in 4e, though.

Almsot certainly, the best example would be a straight translation of the Warlock to Essentials mechanics. A class that does Eldritch Blast every day, all day, but uses stances to modify EB and add elements, damage, effects, etc, encoutner powers (I probably would give them encoutner powers) to make EB do something special but only once an encounter, and something special over a regular warlock (better defenses/hp mabye) to make up for not having daily powers.

I wouldn't do a daily-less or basic-always wizard (the wizard's too tied into having different spells), but I could totally see an arcane controller who didn't have a lot of power variation too.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That's just not how you'ld do a simplified arcanist in 4e, though.

Almsot certainly, the best example would be a straight translation of the Warlock to Essentials mechanics. A class that does Eldritch Blast every day, all day, but uses stances to modify EB and add elements, damage, effects, etc, encoutner powers (I probably would give them encoutner powers) to make EB do something special but only once an encounter, and something special over a regular warlock (better defenses/hp mabye) to make up for not having daily powers.

I wouldn't do a daily-less or basic-always wizard (the wizard's too tied into having different spells), but I could totally see an arcane controller who didn't have a lot of power variation too.

ALL you have done is shift the decision to "which stance should I be in this round?" instead of "which at-will should I use this round?". I don't think choice of at-wills is the major complexity point. If it were then a PHB1 Warlock is as simple as what you describe, they (generally) have ONE effective at-will and they just spam that sucker and drop curse on things.

It is daily powers that always make things tricky, and somewhat encounter ones. The player is balancing resource expenditure vs gain in a rather complex fashion. Usually in 4e you can either use the daily or slug it out and still win. The choice is usually between "I use up my daily OR the fighter has to expend 2 more surges". This is a tricky sort of decision process and is then complicated by tactical considerations as well. Even experienced players sometimes bog down.

I don't think the Iron Heroes style arcanist would really be better. He's still balancing resources and he STILL has a bunch of choices of power types to use and power levels to use them at. If you want less complexity you either need less effectiveness or less flexibility. The complexity is largely baked into the core system.

 

[Quickleaf]

Are there previews for the arcanist online? I have no exposure to Iron Heroes, but I don't think sacrificing flexibility is a bad thing for a class designed with newer or less tactically oriented players in mind. Actually you could provide flexibility just on a narrow *bandwidth* (eg. Player can choose between ranged, blast, or burst). A warlock or sorcerer type class could be lots of fun with just at-will powers modified by a few encounter powers. I agree that 4e has complexity built in to its rules, but I think it can be greatly reduced by how a class is designed. For example, if there's no ongoing damage power, no additional "chaos magic" or "pact" riders (or it's constant across all powers), absolutely no dailies of any kind, no zones and so on, there's a lot less to keep track of and the player has fewer rules they need to understand to run their character effectively. This would be great for a striker, but I don't see it working well for a controller.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Yeah... sorcerer, druid, and runepriest... you pretty much have an uphill battle trying to make those classes "easier" than they are. Sorcerer already is one of the easier spellcasting classes... and the other two are purposefully designed to be more difficult.

As much as the players may want to "design" their own characters... if it's really become a problem, you might all want/need to revise their characters a little bit to try and make them just a little bit easier. Here are a couple suggestions you might try...

1) Only select feats that modifier the hard, non-situational numbers in the game. Ones like Toughness, Improved Initiative, Weapon Focus, Skill Focus etc. Those will automatically get applied to the values they modify, so they never have to "remember" to use their feats. Their feats are already applied.

2) Select powers all of one type. So don't select some bursts and some blasts, choose one or the other. Don't select some Ranged and some Area... choose one or the other. Minimize the choices they have to remember.

3) Avoid taking too many powers with too many different keywords or conditions. If the druid doesn't care about wildshaping, don't select any Beast Form powers (other than the one at-will she has to take). Avoid having one power that immobilizes, one that slows, one that creates difficult terrain etc. Give them almost all powers that just cause damage, with maybe one or two that do a single thing else (like let her shift, or let her knock the enemy prone etc.)

While this may cut down on the tactical uses of some of these characters... it sounds like just getting things done faster trumps any other need to get "special" abilities onto the table, like stuns, multiple square slides, close blasts targeting all creatures, etc. etc. Anything you can do to cut down on the number of things they have to remember they can do or how they do them (especially considering they don't seem to care anyway)... the easier it will be for them and everybody else at the table.

 

[WalterKovacs]

2) Select powers all of one type. So don't select some bursts and some blasts, choose one or the other. Don't select some Ranged and some Area... choose one or the other. Minimize the choices they have to remember.

I would almost suggest going the other way with this. If all the powers are basically the same, it means that they are often equally suited to each situation. On the other hand, if they have say ... 1 single target ranged attack, 1 area attack and 1 close blast attack for encounters, it may make things easier.

Can you get 2 or 3 enemies in the area without hitting an ally? Area. Are the monsters right on top of you? Close Blast 'em. Otherwise stick to the single target.

At least in the case of at-wills, having say 2 options, one being the default, and the other being the "in case of trouble" one may be good. (For a wizard, for example, thunderwave if you are in melee with a monster, otherwise use your ranged/area attack power).

Any tactical powers the character has should be made clear to the player beforehand, especially which situations to use those powers.

 

[Quickleaf]

Yeah I don't know if other groups have had this same issue but it sure has come up for us. It's like so much time goes into figuring out the tabtics and semantics of a power (particularly for these 3 players) that there's less roleplaying happening. So we definitely did your #1 UHF, and we actually did exactly what you were suggesting for the druid. I almost think our group would be better off with homebrewed classes tailored to these 3 players but our DM isn't into it, and the group is addicted to the Character Builder... Everyone was shocked when I brought a penciled in Essentials character sheet to our first game.

 

[MerricB]

Check out Iron Heroes spell casting.

Iron Heroes was a disaster when it came to balance. Several classes were overshadowed totally by other classes. I wouldn't look for it for anything.

 

[Trife]

I'm a fan of what my DM did to assist in the complexity for my SO and a friend's SO that decided to play for the first time in our 4e game. The DM had them choose a class and abilities as per the norm (my SO is a wizard, the other SO is a fighter) and did not guide their selections much, just kept encouraging them to think as logically as possible about the powers and abilities. They somewhat struggled through the first level, learning how attacks worked and looked at me and my friend as veteran players to learn what works and what doesn't. At second level, the DM allowed the SO's to change two powers instead of just one (there were also some liberties with ability scores) to account for the learning curve that took place during the first level.

The lesson I learned was that I'm not sure the answer was to produce a simpler class, but rather to provide the opportunity to learn and then be able to be flexible with changing the character during the first part of the game when new.

 

[Quickleaf]

That's a good point. Our DM is doing something similar. We've started at 8th level and we're still getting to know our characters so that has something to do with it. Thing is we've all played 4e for about a year in the campaign I ran. We started at 1st and ended at 8th. But throughout that year these 3 players struggled with tactical power use and just making sense of their powers. If a player just doesn't care about fiddly bits then no amount of "teaching" is going to make them remember. They just want to do cool magic stuff and lots of damage OR heal the party OR be mischievous and whimsical.