It is a style of character building that has no choice, that is what everyone is worried about.
"No choice" isn't how I'd describe it. The Essentials classes I've been playing have a good amount of choice, thanks to the ability to swap out same-level powers. They let me build, for instance, a Pyromancer who has more than enough stuff to stick in his spellbook that is pure fire damage dakka, even though the Heroes books don't have a whole lot in the way of that directly.
There may be loads of new fighter builds in the new Essentials character format, but that means there will be no more daily fighter powers.
Do you not have enough daily fighter powers to make the kind of fighter you want?
Jhalen said:
Yup. And one of the things I dislike about the new builds is the difference in complexity. In 'classic' 4e all classes and builds were about equal in complexity and probably even more important they followed the same pattern.
But you see how this is a problem when people want to play at different levels of complexity, yes? I am one of those players who rarely picked up wizards in previous editions because I do not like that level of complexity. Then 4e comes along and
everyone is a Vancian wizard, and I am turned off by ALL the classes, because they are ALL too complex for me.
And then we have Essentials, and suddenly I have a lot more variety in complexity, and I love it.
And just because someone
actually likes to play the Slayer over the PHB fighter, this doesn't remove the option for others to play the PHB fighter in the slightest. A broad selection of appeal is a good idea. If your fighter does not have enough daily powers, write some up and submit them to Dragon. I really don't think they'll reject more powers. I just think that perhaps 12 powers/level is
quite enough for meaningful options.
Now the asymmetrical Essentials builds give the impression that 'beginners' or 'slow thinkers' or 'casual players' should stick to low-complexity builds like the slayer, while the high-complexity builds like the mage should be reserved for the 'pro's'.
And that's something I consider a bad thing.
Honestly, as someone who has played these classes, the mage is already a lot simpler than the PHB fighter for a lot of reasons.
But no one should be penalized for wanting to be simpler and more straightforward. In "classic" 4e, you essentially told those people who don't want to be 'pros' at pretending to be magical gumdrop elves to go get lost and play Diablo. That's not a great thing, from a business or D&D perspective.