D&D 4E Inquiry: How do 4E fans feel about 4E Essentials?

[Weiley31]

In a full-4e game where you can cherry pick the Essentialized stuff you want? Fine. Great. Bring it on. I'll ignore the terrible stuff and some of the lame fluff in the later books.

As one who has never played 4E, but occasionally gets a slight urge to try out past editions, this is probably the best direct route to do when it comes to 4E.

 

[Weiley31]

I don't think 5e is anything like 3e with 'traps'.

Some people would probably argue the 5E Assassin is a bit of a trap option.

 

[Garthanos]

Some people would probably argue the 5E Assassin is a bit of a trap option.

Monks (... and all martial for anything but a low level dip)

 

[Joshua Randall]

As one who has never played 4E, but occasionally gets a slight urge to try out past editions, this is probably the best direct route to do when it comes to 4E.

cracks knuckles

If you get the urge to try out 4e, start a new thread and you'll get lots of advice. Including mine.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Monks (... and all martial for anything but a level dip)

That is so totally not true...

 

[Deekin]

Re: Pointless class variants

D&D across all editions has historically been haunted by a concept I call 'now shut up' items.

The weird thing about the Bladesinger is that we already had the incredibly beloved Swordmage in 4e.

That is so totally not true...

While monks are an Ok class, they have issues with resource management, especially in the one deadly fight per paradigm that seems to dominate 5e actual play.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

4e's 4 (4!!!!) versions of playable vampires

I never really agreed with the criticisms of this. I mean, one of those IIRC was the Vryloka which isn’t even really a vampire, it’s a related but distinct concept, basically modeling a dhampyr rather than a playable vampire.

The class was bad because you had to hack it with hybrid rules to make it any good, and the couple feats were nice secondary ways to get a little bit of vampire without sacrificing whatever else the character was doing.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Monks (... and all martial for anything but a low level dip)

Well that just isn’t true.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The weird thing about the Bladesinger is that we already had the incredibly beloved Swordmage in 4e.

And they could have so easily made an essentials style Swordmage.

The Bladesinger was actually really fun if you just let them use their “daily” powers as encounter powers. At least in heroic. The basic concept of the at-wills was good, it just kinda petered out into nonsense after that.

 

[Garthanos]

The weird thing about the Bladesinger is that we already had the incredibly beloved Swordmage in 4e.

I wanted a striker variant Swordmage myself.

While monks are an Ok class, they have issues with resource management, especially in the one deadly fight per paradigm that seems to dominate 5e actual play.

They also have lots of flavor competing with function to use those resources