Heroes of the Feywild Speculation

[Terramotus]

I just feel completely flabbergasted when I read stuff like this. Granted, I'm a DM, so the changes in Essentials haven't really affected me, but when I read for example the druid subclass (sentinal) in Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms, it just feels so much richer thematically. When I opened the original 4E player's handbook and was greeted by the Wall of Never-Ending Powers, it almost killed my enthusiasm for the game. When I open Heroes of the Fallen Lands (and forgotten kingdoms), I get inspired. The abilities have more traction, its not just "2W + Int damage, slide 1 square", now its also "choose one wilderness knack", or speak with animals at level x, etc. The slayer class is also a godsend, because now there is a class I can give to players who are either extremely unexperienced or are not interested in having five pages of powers to keep track of. The new direction in design has move 4E in the right direction, IMHO. The only thing left to fix - and this is the big one - is the long, long, long time it takes to run combats. Fix that, and 4E is my ideal (high-fantasy) RPG.

For the record, I'm almost always DM. In brief, the stuff you like about Essentials I also like. If WotC hadn't been desperate to sell all of the experienced players the whole line of Essentials books, then those things should have, by all rights, been released in some sort of Player's Option book for all the classes. And we all would have loved it.

As far as game flow, the combat part of D&D is better than it ever has been. The At-Will, Encounter, Daily mechanic hits all the good spots, and 4E took me from loving the concept of martial characters but being bored to tears playing them to loving to play martial characters. Other than that, in pre-3E I could have just left a sign in my chair that said, "I attack," and gone out for pizza. Anything more in-depth than that was resorting to extra-game mechanics to try to have some fun with it. In 3E that was sometimes replaced with, "I do my shtick," where the shtick was the one thing you were good at through a combination of feat choices and PrCs. 4E changed that.

Removing the At-Will, Encounter, Daily dynamic, which I consider fundamental to 4E just feels like a weird mutant half-breed. And for what? Because they're too hard? Don't insult my intelligence. That's fine if Essentials were just an intro game, which I guess is clear by now that it's not. It's not fine to force it into O4E and then jack with the balance to favor the new weird mechanics. Nobody would have cried, "ZOMG, OP!" if core druids could speak with animals too. It didn't need to be reserved for Essentials.

Ultimately, Essentials is some cool errata and additions lumped in with some IMHO crazy decisions that run counter to 4E's strengths, and I'm finding it hard to tell which is which without becoming an expert on a system I have no intent in allowing into my game.

EDIT: Apologies for threadjacking. Essentials gets me so worked up I find it hard to stay on topic.

 

[Terramotus]

And before someone else says it, it also doesn't mean that they're never again designing a product to support your preference. Heroes of Shadow does a lot to support the shadow theme and it delivers content for essentials and non-essentials alike (and no, HoS is not an Essentials book. "Heroes of X" does not mean Essentials). The theme articles make incredible strides at support for everybody across the board.


You're right, they can't please everyone all the time. The people who aren't pleased at a given moment need to realize that, sit the frack down, and have some tolerance. Just because you didn't get a new shiny at the same time as someone else doesn't mean your old toys are now useless. Most people learned this by about age 6.


I'll say it again so we're clear: The presence or design initiative for Essentials does not in any way invalidate the PHB or any core rulebook. They are all 100% rules-legal player resources, and I cannot fathom for the life of me where people get this ludicrous idea that Essentials has somehow broken the game or made it impossible to have fun anymore, especially in a game where the rules are what you make of them.

See, that's the funny part. Although you're mostly correct (those who are character builder reliant are somewhat invalidated by some of the changes), you're mostly wrong IMO about the rest. The contradictory answers from WotC people, sometimes even the same person (This is the way going forward vs It's only a starter set) make the answer of whether any original O4E content is ever coming out again far from clear.

Heroes of Shadow IS 100% an Essentials book. It just doesn't have the name on the title. Yeah, you can use some races, feats, even powers here and there, but all the class content is Essentials. Just like the core Essentials books.


The main reason why the new books get to me so much is that it by definition is content that would have been in O4E had Essentials not come along. We haven't had an O4E book in about a year. If they even wanted to put both in the same book... fine, knock yourselves out. I'll use the version I like. But we might have had a cool update to the Assassin, a Vampire class, and a Blackguard Paladin build to play with had WotC not inexplicably decided to fracture their fanbase.

I bought every damn one of the O4E books, and loved doing it. The new book announcements get me excited, only to find out that there's not much content that is going to be usable for me. It brings me high and then yanks me down low. Worse for WotC, I'm not going to pay the full price of a book for a few feats and maybe a Paragon Path. I'll either get it from the Character Builder or disallow it from my game.

EDIT: I wasn't thinking, should have merged those two posts together. Sorry about that.

 

[Mummolus]

The thing about Essentials that bothers me, really, is that they're being repeatedly called "builds" but presented as classes. There's a "build" option in the character builder - if these were actually builds, why not stick them in there and let the pre-E classes select features and the like from them? Instead, the Essentials "builds" show up under the "Choose Your Class" tab.

Personally, I think that if for example the Executioner had been incorporated as a classic-sense "build", then the OAssassin would have gone from being one of the worst strikers to being one of the better ones. Instead, we end up with two "classes" with cross-support that doesn't help them much at all (all of those Assassin feats talking about shrouds certainly don't help the Executioner).

It just seems like all of the design work that's gone into the Essentials classes could have easily been applied to the Pre-Essentials "parent" classes, and everybody would have won. Instead we get... This.

 

[Klaus]

Heroes of Shadow IS 100% an Essentials book. It just doesn't have the name on the title. Yeah, you can use some races, feats, even powers here and there, but all the class content is Essentials. Just like the core Essentials books.

(Emphasis mine)

Then it's not really 100%, is it?

You have cleric, warlock and wizard powers listed apart from the Warpriest domain, Mage schools and Hexblade pact. The fact that Essentials builds can also take these powers doesn't lessen the fact that they are available for core versions of the classes.

You also have three new races, 10 paragon paths, 4 epic destinies and 20 feats, all available for any class, core or Essential. As I've said before, I wrote most of those, and when I did it, Essentials wasn't even out.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

(Emphasis mine)

Then it's not really 100%, is it?

You have cleric, warlock and wizard powers listed apart from the Warpriest domain, Mage schools and Hexblade pact. The fact that Essentials builds can also take these powers doesn't lessen the fact that they are available for core versions of the classes.

You also have three new races, 10 paragon paths, 4 epic destinies and 20 feats, all available for any class, core or Essential. As I've said before, I wrote most of those, and when I did it, Essentials wasn't even out.

Yeah, it is a losing proposition Klaus. Honestly, I think the whole tenor of the meta-discussion on the subject of WotC and 4e has reached a stage of complete irrationality. I don't think people are talking about what they're talking about. It seems to me there is something else. There's a set of things that bother people, but not things they're really ready to acknowledge. It isn't the trivia of what this and that HoS class power level is nor "is HoS an Essentials book." There is an underlying debate that isn't being expressed in words. I think that debate centers more on whether or not 4e really succeeded at all.

 

[Klaus]

Yeah, it is a losing proposition Klaus. Honestly, I think the whole tenor of the meta-discussion on the subject of WotC and 4e has reached a stage of complete irrationality. I don't think people are talking about what they're talking about. It seems to me there is something else. There's a set of things that bother people, but not things they're really ready to acknowledge. It isn't the trivia of what this and that HoS class power level is nor "is HoS an Essentials book." There is an underlying debate that isn't being expressed in words. I think that debate centers more on whether or not 4e really succeeded at all.

I hear ya. Sometimes it seems as though, unless it's something no Essentials character can ever take, then it must be Essentials support, instead of being line-wide support.

Well, back to the regularly scheduled Heroes of the Feywild speculation.

 

[RangerWickett]

I for one would like to see The Essentials' birth certificate.

 

[Incenjucar]

I don't think anyone honestly views races, feats, paragon paths, or epic destinies as part of the pre-E/post-E conversation, since their design didn't change substantially, aside from the introduction of "roleplay!" as a racial power. The only way that they've been "Essentialized" is that their mechanics are now padded by more fluff.

For the Feywild book to avoid being deemed an Essentials book, it will have to either introduce class material for undersupported pre-Essentials classes to help bring them forward or it will have to include full-sized, pre-Essentials-style classes with all the bells and whistles. These classes will also have to be done well, or the community will treat it as an insult, like offering someone a delicious pie then throwing it in their face.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't think anyone honestly views races, feats, paragon paths, or epic destinies as part of the pre-E/post-E conversation, since their design didn't change substantially, aside from the introduction of "roleplay!" as a racial power. The only way that they've been "Essentialized" is that their mechanics are now padded by more fluff.

For the Feywild book to avoid being deemed an Essentials book, it will have to either introduce class material for undersupported pre-Essentials classes to help bring them forward or it will have to include full-sized, pre-Essentials-style classes with all the bells and whistles. These classes will also have to be done well, or the community will treat it as an insult, like offering someone a delicious pie then throwing it in their face.

Where is the design space supposed to come from for this?

 

[Incenjucar]

Where is the design space supposed to come from for this?

The design space that would otherwise go to more wizard powers and hexblade variants?