Look Ma- Rules Updates!

[gourdcaptain]

What bugs me the most is that they limited rogues to hand crossbows. What's wrong with letting them use non-dinky +3 proficiency crossbows? (Or superior crossbows?) I mean, you need to spend a feat to get proficiency with them.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I guess action point ready an attack on the opponents turn will make the 2nd sneak attack damage feat quite obsolete... not that i mind

Nice changes overall. I like the wording of melee training, which distinguishs between attack and damage replacement...

edit: the rapier change is a straight buff to small fighters. at least they now have a martial one handed weapon that does d8 damage and has a +3 modifier...

 

[SteveC]

What bugs me the most is that they limited rogues to hand crossbows. What's wrong with letting them use non-dinky +3 proficiency crossbows? (Or superior crossbows?) I mean, you need to spend a feat to get proficiency with them.

I'd expect we'll see a feat to fix err, well, this current fix, but until then the sniper rogue is done for. I'm sure someone will have to tell me sometime why the change was a good thing (were there too many snipers running around? Were there any complaints about this?).

I'm trying to find the good in most of these fixes and honestly I'm not seeing it. But hey, we haven't seen all of Essentials, so who knows how it will eventually work out. And something tells me there will be a couple of major rounds of errata for the Essential rules themselves, so it will be a good three or four months before the whole thing shakes out.

--Steve

 

[Saeviomagy]

I'd expect we'll see a feat to fix err, well, this current fix, but until then the sniper rogue is done for. I'm sure someone will have to tell me sometime why the change was a good thing (were there too many snipers running around? Were there any complaints about this?).

At a guess the SA change is based around an assumption about levels of damage that are violated by crossbows and superior crossbows (compare a warlock's basic attack to a rogue's).

That said I would prefer that they simply add a specific "rogue weapon" property to appropriate weapons (ie: relatively low die size, quiet, one-handed) which would include sensible stuff that is currently excluded, like unarmed and clubs and exclude things which might be currently included, like arbalests.

 

[Amphimir Míriel]

I know how the devs can end the swordmage whining...

Add a +1/+2/+3 feat bonus to attack and damage with light and heavy blade weapon and implement attacks to Intelligent Blademaster.

That way, Swordmages would have to take one feat and be done with it.

Actually, since I have never seen a Swordmage without Intelligent Blademaster, I think it should become a class feature.

Then make two feats, one where using a simple weapon as both an implement and a weapon gets a +1/+2/+3 feat bonus, and another one with a bonus to military weapons.

 

[SteveC]

RE: the Swordmage and the new feats, yes, they are a defender class, but at the same time the game's other defenders can get away with taking only one feat to increase their damage. In other words, it's not an intended "defender tax." I think this is a case of design happening quickly, and no one thinking about the specific implications in some of the lesser developed character classes. As I play a Swordmage, I can tell you that they are not one of the heaviest supported classes (at least not anymore).

I think we'll see a lot of minor fixes for issues like this one in the next few months... I'm sure there will be a feat that sword mages can take to get dual bonuses now that the community has noticed it.

And that's the major problem I see with Essentials: now that it's here, there are some major (and a lot of minor) revisions coming at us, and they really haven't been sufficiently playtested. By that I mean playested outside of the in-house group at WotC.

One of the things touted with the DDI was that we would be getting playtest versions of classes that were coming to us. I'd say that if the major rule changes and new classes for Essentials were previewed, many rules compatibility issues would have been discovered before it was launched.

It will be interesting to see how many more issues like this are discovered.

--Steve

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I don´t see why tose revisions are bad...

only because a single class in a non core book has some issues now doesn´t mean the change was not justified.

Battleminds have mechanics to make their OA dangerous. Swordmages have intelligent blademaster.
I can´t see a single revision that is not a good one. Weapon feats applying to implement attacks was an issue all the time and made staff implements superior in a way that was not intended (Staffs even gets part of this feature back with staff expertise at least)

In the grand scheme, those revisions are very very minor... only few of them are more than simple updates like we have seen before (expertise feats are feat bonuses now, paragon paths usually only grand static bonuses to class and paragon class powers they were designed for)

 

[keterys]

It's not just swordmages - my valor bard does a fairly uniform mix of weapon and implement attacks, so I'll probably be dropping weapon focus myself. I liked it because as a warchanter I can give out temp if I bloody/kill things, so having a respectable damage much of the time was a nice thing.

 

[Theroc]

It's not just swordmages - my valor bard does a fairly uniform mix of weapon and implement attacks, so I'll probably be dropping weapon focus myself. I liked it because as a warchanter I can give out temp if I bloody/kill things, so having a respectable damage much of the time was a nice thing.

And Assassins, and Warlocks I think. And aren't Avengers affected?

 

[keterys]

Yep, and paladins, and lots of hybrids...