New Essentials Builds!

[AbdulAlhazred]

I hear what you are saying but I do think that WotC does listen, and hence is listening to the many voices like your own that feel that essentials could be detrimental to the game. Given that, I do think the material coming out now is expanding the latest addition to the game. It makes only sense that they would want to show how those options can grow, be expanded upon and create flavourful class variations.

Yep, it might seem messy at the moment, but there is a lot we haven't seen yet, like how this will affect the character builder and class creation, which classes have access to which powers, feats etc. Personally, I'm going to keep playing with pre-essential classes. But some interesting options have come out that those classes would like to poach. So I'll reserve judgement until I see the big picture. For now, after having seen what they did with the assassin, I remain quitely positive about the whole thing. It's not going to hinder my game, but hopefully it will improve others games that do prefer this kind of character.

Except the problem is the EXISTENCE of so many redundant but mechanically VERY slightly different options. I don't have a problem with what Essentials IS, I have a problem that it is AT ALL. The other night one of my players expressed a desire to play a fighter. Now this player is not super rules savvy and I'm not even sure owns any 4e books at all outside of a PHB1 and a DDI subscription. Right now this instant she can go into CB and already will see a substantial number of options, 5 builds of Fighter, 3 builds of Barbarian, at least 3 of Warden, all of which could be interesting. Why does she need at least 2 MORE subclasses of Fighter that will soon pop up in her CB? What character can you build with these that you couldn't build before? What advantage is there to having them. Worse they are JUST enough different that a whole slew of new feats and changes to existing feats had to be added in, which just adds MORE clutter.

Basically the players I have are smart players but they are typical players too. They don't care about having 9812 different feats to have to wade through. More than that ironically with all that material the most common situation we run into is someone wants to do X with their character and cannot because you have to deal with so many different requirements and interactions and restrictions and they really have a hard time seeing the forest for the trees. More trees ain't going to make things better.

I mean in theory if Mike and his merry crew wanted to go wipe the slate clean and start over and build a game that used Essentials style classes and could make things simpler and better by doing so that would be fine, but that is also not what is happening here. The reason I say Essentials is likely to hurt the game more than help it is that out there in the real world the biggest enemy of 4e is its own sheer size and the difficulty of players getting hold of all the options. Adding MORE options is not a cure for that.

 

[Ryujin]

While your comments regarding content overload are well taken, the Essentials builds would seem ideal for such a player; more simple in design, implementation, and play.

 

[Mengu]

Sorry, can you quote where they say it? I cannot find it. Thanks!

They are rules of omission really. It says:

"When you use an area or close arcane fire power that is not already a zone, the area of the attack becomes[/] a zone that lasts until the end of your next turn."

It doesn't say you may turn it into a zone. So it always becomes a zone. Similarly it doesn't say you may end the zone as an X action (such as with powers like Icy Terrain). So you can't voluntarily end it before the end of your next turn.

It may not be such a big deal for your allies especially if you are paying attention to stats other than Con for things like Enlarge Spell and Dual Implement so your Con isn't very high, heck an infernal warlock may want to just walk into it to take some damage. But there are often people who wrinkle their nose at the prospect of taking friendly fire.

 

[Ryujin]

Not sure that the "rule of omission" concept really applies. After all, powers that push don't say that you *may* push the target X number of squares, but i believe that the actual rule applied is anything from 0 to X number of squares, at the character's discretion. I would make the zone optional but assumed by default, unless otherwise stated.

 

[Mengu]

Not sure that the "rule of omission" concept really applies. After all, powers that push don't say that you *may* push the target X number of squares, but i believe that the actual rule applied is anything from 0 to X number of squares, at the character's discretion. I would make the zone optional but assumed by default, unless otherwise stated.

You may push 0 to X squares because there is a rule which specifically covers that exception under forced movement: "You can choose to move the target fewer squares or not to move it at all."

Zones do not have such a rule that say you may optionally not have this zone around. If the rule says there is a zone without the word "may" or "can" or the like, there is a zone, it is not optional.

 

[Ryujin]

You may push 0 to X squares because there is a rule which specifically covers that exception under forced movement: "You can choose to move the target fewer squares or not to move it at all."

Zones do not have such a rule that say you may optionally not have this zone around. If the rule says there is a zone without the word "may" or "can" or the like, there is a zone, it is not optional.

Thank you. I had never noticed that entry under Forced Movement before. I think that I would still allow the zone to be optional though as it isn't provided by the power, but the character, and the idea of giving more power but less control doesn't sit well with me.

 

[Artoomis]

I also like the pyromancer...

note that the 10d10 fire spell is not much better than the war wizards 8d10 spell... so not out of line...

Expected result of 55 vs. 44. That's a pretty big difference, isn't it? 25% more damage.

 

[Spatula]

Expected result of 55 vs. 44. That's a pretty big difference, isn't it? 25% more damage.

Sure, but it comes with the cost of taking (half of your max hit points) damage.

 

[Raunalyn]

It actually seems easier, as you don´t need to write thousands of powers for each build!

just exchange one or two features and you are done... as i hoped, essential and unearthed arcana approach will make designing classes much more fun, as you are less restricted...

still the base foundation is retained. Well done Mike Mearls.

So, Mike Mearls HASN'T ruined everything?

 

[AngryMojo]

So, Mike Mearls HASN'T ruined everything?

Sure he did. With this post, he ruined at-will powers that don't make zones, because they're not as good anymore. And now, because the at-will powers that do make zones aren't optional, he ruined those to.

Oh, the ruination!