D&D 5E Powers beget powers.

[Remathilis]

IMO, 4e right now - at the end of its product line - is a far, far better game than it was at release. Some of the things you're mentioning here are big parts of that.

FWlittleIW, new Bards and Barbarians were released in Heroes of the Feywild. The new Bard is a basic-attack character ... kinda. The new Barbarian switches from Defender to Striker mid-combat. I've not seen the former in action (it's just weird), but the latter is really effective and IMO better represents the "beefy pseudo-martial raging" barbarian of 1e & 3e than the PHB2 version did.

-O

I maintain that if Essentials had been released in 2010 as D&D 4e, it'd be hailed far better than it was now. TBH I was shocked Next is as OS as it is, I fully expected it to be an All-Essentialized version of 4e with all the fixes in place.

Sadly, what came out in 2008 was half-baked, and it ruined the taste for enough players (myself included) that no matter how good Essentials was, it was never going to sell them. Hell, there are people I know who won't even look at Next because of what 4e did to "their game".

 

[Obryn]

I maintain that if Essentials had been released in 2010 as D&D 4e, it'd be hailed far better than it was now.

I agree, actually. If Essentials had been the first 4e release, I think it would have been much better-received. I love the normal 4e classes, but much like with Bo9S coming in at the end of 3.5, the AEDU classes could have come out after people got used to the new game.

Unlike many, I don't think 4e was a big jump from latter-era 3.5; it felt organic and natural to me and my group. But it needed a lot more playtesting, obviously. It's odd, but WotC clearly had no idea how the game would actually work when it was released. As I mentioned up-thread or elsewhere, some of the early game's bugs were damn easy to spot.

-O

 

[Remathilis]

I agree, actually. If Essentials had been the first 4e release, I think it would have been much better-received. I love the normal 4e classes, but much like with Bo9S coming in at the end of 3.5, the AEDU classes could have come out after people got used to the new game.

Unlike many, I don't think 4e was a big jump from latter-era 3.5; it felt organic and natural to me and my group. But it needed a lot more playtesting, obviously. It's odd, but WotC clearly had no idea how the game would actually work when it was released. As I mentioned up-thread or elsewhere, some of the early game's bugs were damn easy to spot.

-O

Sadly, it seemed WotC got cold-feet about Essentials shortly after it came out. I don't know if it was the "4.5" moniker hung around it's neck, but I was genuinely shocked more wasn't done with the new format.* There was so much potential for more domains (there was like 4, 5?) schools (we never did get conjuration or transmutation, despite all the existing summon powers and transmuter keyword) and more classes to break the ADEU format, and that didn't even touch magical items before the Emporium.

Anyway, moral of the story is if WotC hadn't jumped the gun, Next wouldn't even be on the horizon.

* I must admit I didn't follow closely, my knowledge is pretty limited.

 

[Magil]

Sadly, it seemed WotC got cold-feet about Essentials shortly after it came out. I don't know if it was the "4.5" moniker hung around it's neck, but I was genuinely shocked more wasn't done with the new format.* There was so much potential for more domains (there was like 4, 5?) schools (we never did get conjuration or transmutation, despite all the existing summon powers and transmuter keyword) and more classes to break the ADEU format, and that didn't even touch magical items before the Emporium.

Anyway, moral of the story is if WotC hadn't jumped the gun, Next wouldn't even be on the horizon.

* I must admit I didn't follow closely, my knowledge is pretty limited.

There are 9 domains, actually. 4 from Neverwinter, 2 from Dragon magazine issues, 1 from Heroes of Shadow, and 2 from HotFL. I think they took that one reasonably far given the amount of time that has passed. There are 6 mage school specializations, though I agree that it's a bad saddening they never took summoning and ran with it, because summoning is one of my favorite ways to play. I suppose they fear what happens if you screw with the action economy, hence the somewhat conservative approach to Instinctive Actions with druid summons (though there are quite a few druid summons that work very well).

The only explanation I can think of for the abandonment of the Essentials line would be a lack of response from the old-school fans they wanted to bring back (speculative, I don't know any numbers here), and the hate it generated in a good portion of the rest of the fanbase. Both of which I think is a shame, because I'm a 4E fan that liked Essentials.

 

[Obryn]

Sadly, it seemed WotC got cold-feet about Essentials shortly after it came out. I don't know if it was the "4.5" moniker hung around it's neck, but I was genuinely shocked more wasn't done with the new format.* There was so much potential for more domains (there was like 4, 5?) schools (we never did get conjuration or transmutation, despite all the existing summon powers and transmuter keyword) and more classes to break the ADEU format, and that didn't even touch magical items before the Emporium.

Anyway, moral of the story is if WotC hadn't jumped the gun, Next wouldn't even be on the horizon.

* I must admit I didn't follow closely, my knowledge is pretty limited.

We did end up getting something like Transmutation in the Witch, but it wasn't a specific school. Plenty of that style of spell, though, including a pretty cool At-Will.

Conjuration was handled pretty adequately with the normal Wizard, I think, unlike, say, Enchantment.

But yes. I agree. The product launch was mismanaged in like eight different ways (maybe more).

Anyway....

The only explanation I can think of for the abandonment of the Essentials line would be a lack of response from the old-school fans they wanted to bring back (speculative, I don't know any numbers here), and the hate it generated in a good portion of the rest of the fanbase. Both of which I think is a shame, because I'm a 4E fan that liked Essentials.

This largely covers it.

It didn't revitalize the line, won back fairly few players (they missed their chance, I think), and caused a lot of confusion among both the existing fanbase and new players. It's not surprising - it was a weird sort of project. I mean, it was both a supplement and a complete, playable game - how weird is that? Unheard of for D&D; it's more along the lines of a third-party 3e product like Arcana Evolved than anything else. And it wasn't a new edition, because it was designed to work alongside the existing core rules rather than replacing them. So it was hard for them to get across, and the end result was that everyone basically thought they were lying. (And it turned out it was exactly what they said it was going to be.) Some 4e fans never got over it, either.

-O

 

[Remathilis]

It didn't revitalize the line, won back fairly few players (they missed their chance, I think), and caused a lot of confusion among both the existing fanbase and new players. It's not surprising - it was a weird sort of project. I mean, it was both a supplement and a complete, playable game - how weird is that? Unheard of for D&D; it's more along the lines of a third-party 3e product like Arcana Evolved than anything else. And it wasn't a new edition, because it was designed to work alongside the existing core rules rather than replacing them. So it was hard for them to get across, and the end result was that everyone basically thought they were lying. (And it turned out it was exactly what they said it was going to be.) Some 4e fans never got over it, either.

-O

It did a lot of cool things and implemented them half-ass. Magic item rarity being a prime example.

Still, its interesting to see how some of the "thinking" for Essentials motivated the design of Next.

 

[Obryn]

It did a lot of cool things and implemented them half-ass. Magic item rarity being a prime example.

It took a year, but item rarity finally got sorted out. Mordenkainen's Magic Emporium was a major landmark, with plenty of Rare and Common items. The rest was handled through the errata process; most existing items stayed Uncommon, but a lot of the basics were moved to Common. (Few things already in existence qualified for a Rare, except for example a sword that gave you +1 to attacks while in a Stance. Since that's every E-Martial class ... well, you see the logic.) And since then, items released in Dragon and Dungeon have run the spectrum.

So yes. Half-ass when released, but fully-realized ... eventually. It's a theme.

As I said, 4e is a much better game now. IMO, Rarity is another clear, 100% improvement, putting magic items back into the DM's hands to a greater degree than we've seen since 2e.

-O