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

[MwaO]

Who cares what healing is? I mean it's not as if it's something wizards can do and no one else bothers with the schools.

I would just note in 4e, Wizards do have healing options, in large part due to the Witch's Full Moon Coven "White Mage" sub-build and Necromantic Mages. Herbal Healing, Glorious Presence(s), Lifetaker, but also Soul Harvest, Vampiric Strike

 

[Neonchameleon]

Yeah, I felt like there was a lot that could have been done with it. Opening up different feats and whatnot for example would have been really interesting. Also the feature is just not substantial enough.

I think they sort of wanted to do that with the implement masteries, but for some reason the idea was stillborn or there wasn't time to go back and develop it. I think implements were a late addition to the game. That also explains the failure to give them a proficiency bonus to attacks, and then the weird kludgy skewing of AC vs NAD that lead to much other badness later on.

I think they needed to LEAN IN on riders for wizard. They had riders for warlocks that were sort of so-so, but they did work. Some were even pretty clever. What if wizard powers all had implement riders? Not just "here's a power and if you happen to be an orbizard BONUS!" but they could have had riders for each implement. All of them would be controller features, but each could be slightly different. Orbs mesmerize or otherwise debuff, or enhance some sort of mental effect, etc. Wands allow some more clever targeting options, and staves do your push, slide, knockdown kind of stuff. There could then be a signature power or two that you can only get if you have a specific implement. Tome would easily fit into that paradigm, and the use of the "and this is your secondary attribute" thing works fine with all of that.

It is sort of a signature of 4e that they came up with some interesting ideas, and then didn't execute them. There's a lot of unfulfilled potential in the whole class hierarchy.

If 4e had been created with unlimited time then they might possibly have done that - but it is long, fiddly, and complex. And as mentioned 4e was put together far too fast (14 months from restart to publication).

Essentially what you are asking for is for almost every spell to be written essentially as three separate spells. And then if they'd done it the way you suggest they almost literally couldn't have added the fourth implement in (the tome) because they would have had to rewrite almost every spell in the PHB to give it its implement-based riders.

And even if they'd done this the basic approaches still wouldn't have been as evocative and easy to understand for newbies as Necromancers, Pyromancers, and Nethermancers. But you're probably right that they were added late in the day - as, I suspect, was the fighter weapon training (+1 with one handed/+1 with two handed? Seriously?)

 

[Undrave]

We could even repeat this experiment with different people. I suspect that the thematic groupings

You seem to have gotten cut off there? Was there more?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

If 4e had been created with unlimited time then they might possibly have done that - but it is long, fiddly, and complex. And as mentioned 4e was put together far too fast (14 months from restart to publication).

Essentially what you are asking for is for almost every spell to be written essentially as three separate spells. And then if they'd done it the way you suggest they almost literally couldn't have added the fourth implement in (the tome) because they would have had to rewrite almost every spell in the PHB to give it its implement-based riders.

And even if they'd done this the basic approaches still wouldn't have been as evocative and easy to understand for newbies as Necromancers, Pyromancers, and Nethermancers. But you're probably right that they were added late in the day - as, I suspect, was the fighter weapon training (+1 with one handed/+1 with two handed? Seriously?)

Actually, I hit on a good way to engineer this sort of thing in HoML, which is 'kickers'. They exist in 4e too, but were not used in this way, for whatever reason. That is, a kicker is just a supplementary free action power that gets dropped in on top of another attack, like the way Slayer's Power Attack drops in on top of an MBA (and both combine with the stance). MECHANICALLY it is just basically a rider on another power, but you don't have to 'rewrite every power' to add them in. Granted, they are a bit less specific to each individual power, since they will probably ride on a variety of different powers, but with proper keyword use you can get the effect you want, and when you intro a new item in the category you base your riders on, you also intro some new powers that have the very specific riders you want that, in this case implement, to get (IE Tome only really needs special riders on summonings, right? Then it gets 2-3 generic kickers to apply to other powers, you're all set).

Notice how vestige warlocks worked, there was a similar sort of a thing done there. It worked pretty well, the vestige 'lock was a perfectly viable addition even though it didn't get to have any of the PHB1 riders. Honestly, the other way to handle that particular one would have been to just have each vestige make you an 'honorary member' of another pact type for a round or two. That would also have worked OK, aside from the scattershot secondary attribute issue, but they already have that problem...

 

[Aldarc]

You seem to have gotten cut off there? Was there more?

Oh. Only that if we asked multiple people to group the spells into the different traditions (even with guidelines), it's likely that people would not reproduce the associated spell traditions with much accuracy. The traditions don't exactly have the strongest thematics and/or aesthetics that make such judgment calls easy for people. If I asked someone to do the same with SotDL and/or Fantasy AGE, then I suspect that it would be much easier for people to do so or with greater accuracy, but these are games that have magical traditions like Fire, Cold, Illusion, Death, Metal, Shadow, etc.

 

[Garthanos]

For me this is a bit simplistic.

4e reminded me of the story elements of D&D I was familiar with from AD&D and years of using GH as a setting: the various humanoid peoples with their gods (Moradin, Corellon, Grumsh, etc), Demogorgon and Archdevils, wights and wraiths, etc. I thought 4e handled a version of G2 much better than AD&D did, and D2 too!

Obviously it differed in its mechanics from 3E at least as far as PC building is concerned. And it dropped 3E's veneer of simulationism. But in some ways it reminded me of AD&D - it's like someone read Gygax's essays about how hp and saving throws reflect luck and divine inspiration, and built a game that really takes that idea seriously.

Obviously when I say I was reminded of things, I don't mean that 4e emulated them. It built on them and made them better versions of themselves. (And I agree with you that, at least for me, Essentials was frustrating because it reverted back to some extent.)

Very much this... when someone says 4e abandoned Tradition I think poppycock. For me the edition made traditions work even some that had not worked for me started making more sense.

 

[Aldarc]

Very much this... when someone says 4e abandoned Tradition I think poppycock. For me the edition made traditions of work even some that had not worked for me started making more sense.

4e was one of the first genuine times that D&D self-reflected on its own mythos and tried to make more coherent sense of it. Open Grave, for example, tried to make provide solid explanations for the different types of undead and what death/undeath means in the grand scheme of the D&D (and World Axis) mythos. That was pretty darn impressive. It also did the same for the various planes as well.

Considering how James Wyatt adopts a similar angle in Fizban's Treasury of Dragons in trying to make a unified mythos for dragons in D&D, I'm wondering how much of 4e's World Axis mythos is the result of his influence.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

For me the edition made traditions of work even some that had not worked for me started making more sense.

I don't disagree with this. But unfortunately, most people couldn't look any further than the mechanics of the game, which is all that mattered for many. It is, after all, still a game. And for many players, the play is more important than the implied narrative.

 

[Joshua Randall]

4e was one of the first genuine times that D&D self-reflected on its own mythos and tried to make more coherent sense of it. [...] Considering how James Wyatt adopts a similar angle in Fizban's Treasury of Dragons in trying to make a unified mythos for dragons in D&D, I'm wondering how much of 4e's World Axis mythos is the result of his influence.

Everything good about 4e's fluff and world building can be credited to James Wyatt.

OK, not literally everything; there was a team. But the man is EXCEPTIONAL at fluff and world building.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I don't disagree with this. But unfortunately, most people couldn't look any further than the mechanics of the game, which is all that mattered for many. It is, after all, still a game. And for many players, the play is more important than the implied narrative.

Or the name.

If I had a nickel for every time someone said, "Oh, the game is fine, but I would never play it because its not D&D!', I would be riding into space atop a suspiciously shaped rocket.