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

[Garthanos]

Different play style preferences.

The "martial types get no dailies" ,um style, is prone to resulting in martial types having small abilities that are easily out shown by casters, which has been a long time problem in D&D.

To be honest if the only daily resource for any class was hit points/healing surges I would be fine with that too.

 

[Garthanos]

I am just picturing what an essentials released with casters without dailies would have looked like ... it was not going to happen.

 

[Voadam]

In original 4e I still saw intraparty differences when some people always blew their dailies at the first sign of every and any conflict while others hoarded them up "just in case" and never used them.

The Essentials choice of which of these options with their tradeoffs and advantages will you choose for this round is a more fun choice for me than when do I do the game day nova or activate the limited use encounter length power or do I think I should go without for this fight.

 

[Garthanos]

The Essentials choice of which of these options

martial you mean always gets one choice only right

 

[Voadam]

I am just picturing what an essentials released with casters without dailies would have looked like ... it was not going to happen.

Warlock is easy to picture.

Cleric could be a healer/buffer with encounter powers.

I can picture a wizard with more encounter powers.

Having those two be entirely at will would take a stretch.

But no, it did not happen.

 

[Voadam]

martial you mean always gets one choice only right

My 4e PH1 ranger would switch from the two weapons one to the strike and movement at will a bunch depending on the situation.

 

[Garthanos]

My 4e PH1 ranger would switch from the two weapons one to the strike and movement at will a bunch depending on the situation.

We were discussing about whether or not to have the choice of big burst empowerment ... see 5e makes it obvious the plan was to remove that entirely from martial types. Just like they did in essentials.

I generally doubt the ability for anyone to produce a game with mixed resource refresh rates that isn't highly biased by the "game day"

 

[Minigiant]

The "martial types get no dailies" ,um style, is prone to resulting in martial types having small abilities that are easily out shown by casters, which has been a long time problem in D&D.

To be honest if the only daily resource for any class was hit points/healing surges I would be fine with that too.

Honestly I don't think "martials don't get dailies" was the issue.

It's more or the "never go hard" mentality common in D&D Design.

D&D designers, from Dave and Gary down to Mike and James, have been on the conservative side. And this "only dipping it'll the toes" mentality keeps D&D from commiting to a direction until the community starts complaining.

Martial, Divine, Arcane, Primal, and Psionic powers and classes were very very different. However 4e really didn't stress the difference and tie those differences to other parts in the system.

Why you couldn't recharge Martial dailies by spending HP or surges still baffled me. A fighter spamming dailies by sacrificing their stamina just makes too much sense. The Slayer not churning their healimg surges into a Power Attack daily felt like a missed opportunity.

 

[Garthanos]

Why you couldn't recharge Martial dailies by spending HP or surges still baffled me. A fighter spamming dailies by sacrificing their stamina just makes too much sense. The Slayer not churning their healimg surges into a Power Attack daily felt like a missed opportunity.

Yes I mentioned hp's and healing surges as the only dailies kind of for another reason. In part for that exact thought.

In flash back during my stint with AD&D I was working on a magic system where all classes had the same hit points but magic burned through them as part of casting. And if something like that had been in place originally I swear the "conservatives" would complain if you let fighter moves plumb that resource because now it meant "magic"

 

[GMforPowergamers]

with the exception of slayer and maybe executioner I didn't like the class setups. It had some good stuff but it was hard to find. I also hate that it was the start of doing away with balance for caster supremacy.... in retrospect I would say that I dislike where it lead more then what it did.