Oh wow. Countdown to Essentials

[TheClone]

To me the Essentials really sound nice. I hope (and there is reason to do so) that they'll enhance complexity without increasing complications. You as a player will have more resources to think about (because power points or whatever are more flexible to spend than dailies) and I like that. Just deciding when to throw your encounters or dailies into battle wasn't that much of a challenge. So my guess is it will really improve the game. And since nobody has to take the new classes, you can just leave them out or use them as you like. I don't see much problems coming up.

 

[Phaezen]

Trevor Kidd has put some more about the essentials up on his blog

He specifically spells out that you can run essentials characters alongside PHB characters. Each class in the essentials line will basically be a build for an existing class, eg Bow, 2 weapon, beast master, essentials ranger.

 

[cdrcjsn]

Well, like I've said, I think they can make perfectly good classes that don't use daily powers. Its possible the game would work better without dailies in general. Maybe not for all classes but in any case the concept itself is perfectly OK with me.

Actually, I think the current PHB fighter can get rid of all Daily powers right now and still be effective. Just give them an extra action point whenever they would normally get a Daily power (1, 5, 9 etc). Make the limitation on AP use to be one per round rather than one per encounter for this class.

Simple. Damage levels about on par with a regular fighter with Dailies. Fits the "easy for new players to pick up".

 

[Shazman]

I haven't purchased any books yet.

Should I wait until this comes out to buy any books or should I go with PH1-3 and MM1-3?

There's really no point in buying any books. You spend a lot of money on books (they are quite expensive even through amazon) and they become obsolete a few months later when a whole new batch of rules updates nerfs a good chunk of the crunch. QA must be a really low priority for WotC, because I see little evidence of it in their products.

 

[Phaezen]

There's really no point in buying any books. You spend a lot of money on books (they are quite expensive even through amazon) and they become obsolete a few months later when a whole new batch of rules updates nerfs a good chunk of the crunch. QA must be a really low priority for WotC, because I see little evidence of it in their products.

A good chunk of Crunch is a bit of an overstatement, I will see if I can find where the maths was done, but a fraction of a percent of all powers, feats and items have been errated....

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Actually, I think the current PHB fighter can get rid of all Daily powers right now and still be effective. Just give them an extra action point whenever they would normally get a Daily power (1, 5, 9 etc). Make the limitation on AP use to be one per round rather than one per encounter for this class.

Simple. Damage levels about on par with a regular fighter with Dailies. Fits the "easy for new players to pick up".

This for example could work.

I could see a Wizard with "metamagic abilties". He gets at-will powers and daily powers. His "encounter" powers are replaced with "metamagic ability".

Enlarge Spell:
- Use this with an at-will attack blast or burst power
- The blast or burst size is increased by 2.

Empower Spell
- Use this with an at-will power that deals damage on a hit.
- If it is a ranged or melee power, it deals +2d8 extra damage.
- If it is a close or area power, it deals +1d8 extra damage.

Extend Spell
- Use this with an at-will attack power that applies a condition that ends at the end of the targets next turn, or on the start or end of your next turn.
- The condition changes to save ends, with the condition itself as an aftereffect.

And if you can use these abilites only a few times per encounter, you effectively have removed encounter powers but not encounter resources.

 

[TerraDave]

One wonders if they shouldnt rename these subclasses, although I suppose you still have access to existing fighter powers if you use a "fighter 2.0"

It's interesting though that even though this fighter 2.0 is differen't, it doesnt overwrite fighter 1.0

My guess, which just got some confirmation on this thread, is that you will have, say, a Ranger:Archer with a tighter (and easier) set of options. I can still see some name confusion in the future.

 

[The Little Raven]

There's really no point in buying any books. You spend a lot of money on books (they are quite expensive even through amazon) and they become obsolete a few months later when a whole new batch of rules updates nerfs a good chunk of the crunch. QA must be a really low priority for WotC, because I see little evidence of it in their products.

1. Expensive? Nah. $60 can get me several books or products that will produce hundreds and thousands of hours of entertainment. That same $60 can get me an Xbox 360 game that may give me 100 hours, if it doesn't give my girlfriend motion sickness and force me to return it.

2. Obsolete? Hardly. A fraction of the powers and feats in the game have received errata. And not a big fraction, like elementary school kids are used to dealing with. And the books are more than just powers and feats.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Actually, I think the current PHB fighter can get rid of all Daily powers right now and still be effective. Just give them an extra action point whenever they would normally get a Daily power (1, 5, 9 etc). Make the limitation on AP use to be one per round rather than one per encounter for this class.

Simple. Damage levels about on par with a regular fighter with Dailies. Fits the "easy for new players to pick up".

I think this could work with one additional note. The fighter must be able to use these action points to power encounter powers that may have already been used in the encounter. If not, he will be down to using them for basic attacks all too soon.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think this could work with one additional note. The fighter must be able to use these action points to power encounter powers that may have already been used in the encounter. If not, he will be down to using them for basic attacks all too soon.

I think its much simpler. Do this experiment (yes you can do this at home, don't worry it won't cause you to explode like our friendly wizard here : Replace your fighter's daily powers with encounter powers. For this experiment you can just use encounter powers of the next higher level or the next lower level, it won't matter much.

Is this character significantly different in power level? No, not really. He's trading say a level 1 daily power he can use ONCE in 5 or so encounters for an encounter power he can use every time. Furthermore without the daily resource he's actually more likely to get those multiple uses out of it. There is a slightly different balance between encounter and daily powers for other classes, this might not work with wizards for example, but it is a pretty viable concept and is dirt simple to implement (Essentials can simply implement encounter powers for levels 5, 9, etc for these classes).

Notice how wizards are getting a boost to their encounter powers? Hmmmm, kinda makes you think...