D&D 4E Let's Talk About 4E On Its Own Terms [+]

[Zeromaru X]

I'm playing Neverwinter Nights these days, and something I've noticed is that my wizard is mainly a crossbow user who can cast spells occasionally - I have to rest often to be able to cast spells (the game uses 3.x rules). So, another thing to thank 4e for: infinite at-will spells, that you can spam to satiety and feel like a true spellcaster... not as a guy who occasionally cast spells.

 

[James Gasik]

I'm playing Neverwinter Nights these days, and something I've noticed is that my wizard is mainly a crossbow user who can cast spells occasionally - I have to rest often to be able to cast spells (the game uses 3.x rules). So, another thing to thank 4e for: infinite at-will spells, that you can spam to satiety and feel like a true spellcaster... not as a guy who occasionally cast spells.

Sadly, there are quite a few people who think this was the worst decision ever, and magic users should go back to throwing darts. Or oil.

 

[Aldarc]

Sadly, there are quite a few people who think this was the worst decision ever, and magic users should go back to throwing darts. Or oil.

In itself? I don't find it bad. However, in the context of WotC reverting back to LGQW with little to dial down spellcasting while also giving them many new liberties (e.g., Neo-Vancian, Rituals, regain spell slots on short rest, etc.)? I think that something's gotta give somewhere in there, but it doesn't have to be at-wills.

 

[Red Castle]

I'm playing Neverwinter Nights these days, and something I've noticed is that my wizard is mainly a crossbow user who can cast spells occasionally - I have to rest often to be able to cast spells (the game uses 3.x rules). So, another thing to thank 4e for: infinite at-will spells, that you can spam to satiety and feel like a true spellcaster... not as a guy who occasionally cast spells.

This. And also, I do believe that by making them play by the same rules as the other classes (AEDU), they made playing a Wizard more accessible to new players.

I remember the first time I played DnD (it was 2nd ed), I wanted to play a wizard but the spell list, the need to memorise that one spell... it felt complicated, felt like that I could really screw up... so I ended up playing a fighter because I just had to swing my sword.

Fast forward to 4e, playing a wizard is not more complicated than playing a fighter, or any other class... and they're not weak at the beginning... tying Intelligence modifier to AC was a great move I think, it helped the Wizard a lot not getting killed right away. So if a new player was to come to me and say 'I would like to play a wizard!', I could just say 'Go for it!' without risking intimidating by showing him the spell list and explaining how it works.

 

[Mannahnin]

Essentials messes with that strong daily character balance and potential DM planned daily set up. Having lots of at will stances and encounter powers without daily attacks means that healing surges are potentially bearing a lot more of the load for pacing the daily resource management. Essentials characters have less variability in nova power spikes in individual combats so individual combats are easier for a DM to evaluate as a challenge beforehand. And for players who like to nova immediately this means they will generally be better off against end boss fights than under AEDU where they would have already blown their spectacular dailies on earlier fights.

Huh - never read the Essentials books, we were enjoying standard 4e too much to change things up. But I don't often hear of downsides to Essentials - this one is interesting

I heard a bunch of complaints about essentials seeking to woo people who hated 4e by turning its back on the AEDU designs that made 4e balanced and hum for a great daily resource experience.

Whether essentials classes are an enhancement or a detriment depends on how much you like the daily paradigm of AEDU or whether you preferred the ability to do more encounter and at will stuff and not sweat daily resource management as much. I was in the latter.

I don’t think Essentials is bad, just not to my personnal liking. I always loved the variety of powers forceach class that the 4e structured brought, so I must say I was a little bit disappointed when I saw that the fighter was back to doing melee basic attacks, had no daily and instead of gaining more encounter powers, just got to use his one more often… same deal with the elemental sorcerer, I wanted to love it, I loved the concept!… but it felt like it would just spam the same spell over and over again…

I saw this as an advantage, because as Voadam said in his first comment on the subject, "For players who like to nova immediately this means they will generally be better off against end boss fights than under AEDU where they would have already blown their spectacular dailies on earlier fights."

Essentials classes were a great OPTION for folks who wanted to do less management of Daily resources (powers). Who wanted things a little simpler.

For me, who was a multiclass fiend in AD&D and 3.x, the 4E original-flavor Fighter and Rogue were godsends, because they gave me lots of toys and options to play with, without requiring me to multiclass as a caster the way I always had to before.

Fast forward to 4e, playing a wizard is not more complicated than playing a fighter, or any other class... and they're not weak at the beginning... tying Intelligence modifier to AC was a great move I think, it helped the Wizard a lot not getting killed right away. So if a new player was to come to me and say 'I would like to play a wizard!', I could just say 'Go for it!' without risking intimidating by showing him the spell list and explaining how it works.

One of the guys in my group was a wizard fanatic who loved how survivable he was able to make his wizard. I was often surprised at how great his AC got.

 

[Red Castle]

One of the guys in my group was a wizard fanatic who loved how survivable he was able to make his wizard. I was often surprised at how great his AC got.

In the campaign that I'm starting in a month, I would need to check, but I do believe that the Wizard (Staff of Defense and 20 Intel) has more AC than the Fighter with a Plate (Two-handed fighting style with a Two-handed Sword)... not 100% sure , but at least close enough that we joked that the Wizard could tank if need be!

EDIT: I've just checked, they are Lvl 2. The Wizard has AC 17 and the Fighter 19... but still, impressive... most impressive!

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I saw this as an advantage, because as Voadam said in his first comment on the subject, "For players who like to nova immediately this means they will generally be better off against end boss fights than under AEDU where they would have already blown their spectacular dailies on earlier fights."

Essentials classes were a great OPTION for folks who wanted to do less management of Daily resources (powers). Who wanted things a little simpler.

For me, who was a multiclass fiend in AD&D and 3.x, the 4E original-flavor Fighter and Rogue were godsends, because they gave me lots of toys and options to play with, without requiring me to multiclass as a caster the way I always had to before.


One of the guys in my group was a wizard fanatic who loved how survivable he was able to make his wizard. I was often surprised at how great his AC got.

The thing to wonder about though: Is the boss fight always at the end of the day? What if you have a bunch of additional encounters that day but no boss fight? And a Fireball is good for a fight with lots of enemies, but if you're fighting an elite or solo "boss" supported by some artillery, you might find it less useful than in a preceeding fight where you were fighting a horse of standard and minion type enemies.

When I played 4E with my old group, we didn't nova during regular fights, but we did use the occasisional daily if it made sense and helped us pace the fights better. Maybe everyone didn't have 4 dailies in the final fight, but you still got a few healing surges left...

There were also quite a few dailies that had actually longer lasting effects (save ends, sustainable or encounter-lasting), and they could already shift a fight a lot - but stacking them neccessarily wasn't as good (if only because you can't sustain them or by the 3rd or 4th round, the combat is close to over and you won't get much out of it). Of course this requires some mastery in pacing oneself, but if you did, I'd say it might be easily better than anything the Essential non-Daily classes got.

 

[Mannahnin]

The thing to wonder about though: Is the boss fight always at the end of the day? What if you have a bunch of additional encounters that day but no boss fight? And a Fireball is good for a fight with lots of enemies, but if you're fighting an elite or solo "boss" supported by some artillery, you might find it less useful than in a preceeding fight where you were fighting a horse of standard and minion type enemies.

When I played 4E with my old group, we didn't nova during regular fights, but we did use the occasisional daily if it made sense and helped us pace the fights better. Maybe everyone didn't have 4 dailies in the final fight, but you still got a few healing surges left...

There were also quite a few dailies that had actually longer lasting effects (save ends, sustainable or encounter-lasting), and they could already shift a fight a lot - but stacking them neccessarily wasn't as good (if only because you can't sustain them or by the 3rd or 4th round, the combat is close to over and you won't get much out of it). Of course this requires some mastery in pacing oneself, but if you did, I'd say it might be easily better than anything the Essential non-Daily classes got.

Same. And I think this does go to something someone wrote earlier in the thread about some of the Essentials classes being a little underbaked. I did try playing a couple of them and was a little leery of how well they worked at higher levels, in particular.

 

[Voadam]

When I played 4E with my old group, we didn't nova during regular fights, but we did use the occasisional daily if it made sense and helped us pace the fights better. Maybe everyone didn't have 4 dailies in the final fight, but you still got a few healing surges left...

I saw multiple different daily strategies in 4e.

I saw people who used their biggest strongest powers immediately everytime. They wanted to shine and use their coolest powers.

I saw people hoard all their daily resources for what they thought would be either the end boss or emergency situations.

I saw people ration out their daily resources trying to judge the toughness of the current encounter and the expected encounters of the day to efficiently use powers throughout the day (using powers earlier to end fights earlier and save healing resources for later in the day, etc.).

I saw people metagame that travelling encounters or other types of situations would not be multiple encounters in a day so use more daily resources to bigger nova in each encounter to match the expected fewer daily encounters.

I saw people use situational daily utility powers as they became relevant based on situations.

I saw people decide that one daily per encounter was about right and generally stick with that.

I saw mixes of strategies in parties.

I also saw some frustrations with dailies.

I saw the Nova immediately PC who liked to roll big damage get frustrated as encounters continued and they went down in effectiveness.

I saw the hoarding strategy get frustrated when a boss was not reached and they hoarded when it would have been better or more fun to use fun resources that instead went unused.

I saw people get frustrated at trying to measure out dailies and get the judgment wrong for the situations that came up.

I saw some frustration at being incentivized to think about the adventuring day and expected encounters rather than the specific situations at hand. The whole party novaing a wilderness travel random encounter in the middle of a weeks long journey while dungeon end bosses being climactic fights with fewer party big guns for novaing because of attrition uses earlier in the adventuring day felt off.

 

[James Gasik]

Same. And I think this does go to something someone wrote earlier in the thread about some of the Essentials classes being a little underbaked. I did try playing a couple of them and was a little leery of how well they worked at higher levels, in particular.

Slayer, Knight, the Essentials Rangers, and the horrible Binder Warlock were things I noted that had issues right away. The Slayer is amazing in 1-10 play, especially with aberrations like the Dexterity Slayer. But beyond that...you got very minor buffs to their Encounter power.

The Knight had amazing stickiness, but lacked the control elements the base Fighter could bring to the table, nor could they mark at a distance.

The Rangers...well maybe the Scout was ok. But the "controller Ranger" (I can't recall it's title) had one good trick, a big volley attack and that was basically it.

Basically, they were ill-suited for the changing battlefields of high level play.

Then of course, you had the Essentials Cleric and Wizard, that were pretty much the same as their PHB counterparts, and benefited from all the support those classes already had.