Oh wow. Countdown to Essentials

[webrunner]

As someone who has been saying "essentials are probably going to be a big deal"...even occaisionally posting "4.x"...but besides the told you so bit...

I knew it was going to be more then a just some starter products. But even I was surprised by this. Mearls is citing the power points to say "we are going to be less conservative in keeping classes the same".

I welcome simpler. I welcome throwbacks like more different classes or sub-classes (I welcome retro 4E in general). Some mentioned basic above. TSR actually also kept 2E backward compabitible, so there were quite a few combatible versions of the game floating around at one point. Again, this is retro, so I welcome it.

Of course, we will have to see what they actually do. Having two classes called fighter running around in the same game might just be a source of massive confusion.

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

 

[Mengu]

Going with wild speculation here. Consider a build which removes dailies, but gives one daily with some mild conditions as an encounter power. This would make for an easier to play, though overall likely less versatile character.

For instance fighters have daily powers that let them spend a healing surge at various levels. So one of the fighter builds might be that you get no daily powers. Instead as an encounter power, you may spend a healing surge as a minor action. At level 16+, you may spend 1 healing surge and regain hit points as though you had spent two. This would basically simplify play by taking only 1 chosen daily power, and making that a feature for the class.

Another fighter build could be modeled after the "I do more damage" dailies. Once per encounter, as a minor action you pick an adjacent target. Your attacks against the target deal 1d6 additional damage until the end of the encounter. The extra damage increases to 2d6/3d6 at paragon/epic. This is basically a parallel to taking powers like Villain's Menace, Rain of Steel, etc.

I think this approach would simplify the game like they are trying to do. Will it be more powerful than having dailies? For those people who like to spam the same "best" thing over and over, yes, they might be. For those who like versatility, no, probably not.

ps. The examples I gave are not well thought out examples or anything, they are just a three minute brain storm to speculate on what could be possible.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I really hope this will not be a power point mechanic. That is too abusable already. Simpler encounters, (use once and you are done) are better.

I can see them trying to say no encounter is wasted with the miss effect, which I can agree with, overall.

 

[Obryn]

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

Well, they do have a preview for a "knight" on the calendar - and if martial classes are getting the biggest makeover, that'd make the most sense.

-O

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Well the way I see Augmentable Encounter Powers working is that, there might be only 1 level of augmentation unlike Augmentable At-Wills. And the pool of power points is likely one that's refreshed every extended rest. Though maybe there's a small thing like regaining 1 point from a short rest.

I could see something like Steel Serpent Strike (2[w] + slow and can't shift to end next of turn) be augmented into something that does: 3[w] + immobilize (save ends).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Going with wild speculation here. Consider a build which removes dailies, but gives one daily with some mild conditions as an encounter power. This would make for an easier to play, though overall likely less versatile character.

For instance fighters have daily powers that let them spend a healing surge at various levels. So one of the fighter builds might be that you get no daily powers. Instead as an encounter power, you may spend a healing surge as a minor action. At level 16+, you may spend 1 healing surge and regain hit points as though you had spent two. This would basically simplify play by taking only 1 chosen daily power, and making that a feature for the class.

Another fighter build could be modeled after the "I do more damage" dailies. Once per encounter, as a minor action you pick an adjacent target. Your attacks against the target deal 1d6 additional damage until the end of the encounter. The extra damage increases to 2d6/3d6 at paragon/epic. This is basically a parallel to taking powers like Villain's Menace, Rain of Steel, etc.

I think this approach would simplify the game like they are trying to do. Will it be more powerful than having dailies? For those people who like to spam the same "best" thing over and over, yes, they might be. For those who like versatility, no, probably not.

ps. The examples I gave are not well thought out examples or anything, they are just a three minute brain storm to speculate on what could be possible.

I can see many ways that it could work, and I wouldn't call them bad design either. What bothers me is that there is more to compatibility with existing material than just having classes that are built any which way. Its the fact that they are different than existing classes that CAUSES the issues.

Again, if you have a mix of old and new classes they will have different resource allocation needs for instance. You'll have classes that have daily powers wanting to rest and regain their dailies and encounter-only classes that will want to do something else. One of the nice things about 4e has been that all classes have the same resources to allocate. Power points for psionic classes changed that a BIT, but they obviously considered the issue and overall they fit reasonably well with the existing classes. Even so there are some oddities like certain items that are useless for psionic classes and a few things that are even broken (like the psionic consumables which are totally messed up).

There are a lot of elements of 4e that presuppose the existing power system. I'm not really that thrilled to have basic assumptions about how PCs work suddenly changing. Its going to be problematic. It is especially an issue for designers of material going forward, which is now going to have to be constrained by TWO sets of assumptions. It was hard enough to design a feat that wasn't either useless or broken before, its going to be 2x that hard now and much that would have been possible will now be unbalanced with the new stuff and vice versa. I don't think these systems will be as compatible as people seem to think.

I strongly suspect that while you will THEORETICALLY have compatibility between old and new the reality is going to be different. Mixing and matching is going to be tricky and DMs are going to have to be doubly aware of what the implications are of doing it. In the long run I think we'll end up with a lot of stuff that can only be used with the new classes or only really works with the old ones and the result is effectively 2 systems. You'll sort of be able to play them together, but it may not be all that easy.

It doesn't make me a happy camper.

 

[webrunner]

I doubt that classes in the line designed for newbies would have more complicated rules like augmentation...

 

[Shroomy]

BTW, here are some interesting quotes from Mike Mearls over from the WotC boards:

This is something worth pointing out - the Essentials doesn't change anything that you like about 4e.

I don't want to say too much, since we have more preview articles coming out, but if you decide you don't like anything in the Essentials you'll still have plenty of new books, interesting options, and so forth to look forward to.

To pull the key sentences from the article:

"If you’re already playing a Dungeons & Dragons game, there’s one very important thing to remember—the Essentials products matter only as much as you want them to. We very carefully designed the new classes and added more options to the races in such a way that existing characters remain unchanged."

It was critically important throughout the design process to make sure that the above statement was true.

We're in a bit of a weird space, since we don't really talk about the next year's releases until GenCon. However, I can say that since wrapping up Essentials design we've been busy working on 2011 releases. Perhaps more to the point, I still use my PH 1 as my primary rules reference when working on those books.

So, I can't talk in specifics yet, but I think you'll be happy with what we announce.

 

[Sir Osis of Liver]

I'd point out that anyone playing the sorcerer in season two of encounters has seen a non psionic augmentable power. Granted it's a dark sun theme power, but when you cast excise from sight it gives you the option to spend a minor action to augment it. That could very well be an example of the type of thing they're looking at doing with the new classes.

 

[the Jester]

This news has pushed Essentials from "Why bother?" to "Might very well buy" for me.

If it's new and different vs. old and simplified, I am very interested.