The Essential Knight

[Aegeri]

I am planning on buying essentials actually, when before I was going to ignore it entirely. That's because while I really dislike what I know about the Knight, the Mage and Cleric I think sound great. I can't wait to have a look at them and I think the mage getting magic missile for free as a bonus at-will is fantastic (so much so, I houseruled it to being the same for Wizards too).

Edit: Your point is still sound though.

 

[ExploderWizard]

What's funny is that after presenting these previews showing 30% of the rules for the heroic tier, WOTC employees have acted annoyed on message boards and later previews that folks are making incorrect assumptions about Essentials.

Give people enough information to make a sound judgment, and they'll do that; give people enough information to force them to speculate and they'll do that instead.

And I don't understand the value of withholding so much information in these previews. If they included the rules to make an entire Level 1 Essentials PC would they lose any sales?
To the contrary I think more people would be reassured by the extra information and they'd now plan to buy the books.

Yes indeed. If they would have provided enough info to build a complete level 1 version of the core classes then it might have provided more constructive feedback from the player base. Heck, level 1-3 characters are given away with the CB demo.

Level 1 functionality could have helped build more desire and anticipation for the rest of the rules.

 

[Aegeri]

The Essentials Fighter will get better stances at higher levels. You assume that PHB Fighter stances are better, but you haven't seen the other side yet.

If they get an at-will 1[W] automatic damage stance I will eat my hat and I'll do so without condiments.

Otherwise yes, I will assume the PHB fighter stances are inherently better. Once again, by mid paragon and especially epic it's not hard to have a stance active every encounter. The later stances you can pick up are even better than Rain of Steel and Rain of Steel is still a good choice even at epic. Throw several even better choices into the mix and the fighter is spoiled for choice when it comes to good encounter length daily stances to use. The Knight would pretty much have to throw away all his at-will powers to use these, but then again they are that good if the knight can take them there is absolutely no reason why he shouldn't.

 

[mkill]

What's funny is that after presenting these previews showing 30% of the rules for the heroic tier, WOTC employees have acted annoyed on message boards and later previews that folks are making incorrect assumptions about Essentials.

Huh what?

People can't read, can't wait until the product ships, can't be polite and can't shut up and it's the developers' fault? In what world are you living?

- The people who complained that the Warlord was not included would still have complained.

- The guy who needed 3 pages of Charop thread before his reading comprehension kicked in and he noticed that the Knight does not have at-will powers would have acted the same.

- The people who can't accept that a build is targeted at beginners, rather than themselves and their own playing style, would still have complained.

- The people who made assumptions about the Knights power level at Paragon and Epic, even though absolutely zero is known about it, would still have posted their opinion.

- People who take whatever is announced as proof that the WotC designers a) incompetent, b) lying or c) screwing over the fanbase would not have shut up

- People who just know that something is a) overpowered or b) sucks before playing it in an actual game will react like this to any preview no matter of content. In fact, this sums up any thread on any product until 2 weeks after it ships.

There are only very few measures to prevent that kind of reaction, and all of them are drastic and unrealistic / undesirable.

A) Massively investing in public school systems worldwide to improve people's written comprehension

B) Rigorously banning every poster

C) Immediately replying all such posts with a link to the TV Tropes Fandumb article

D) Simply not reading message boards on anything you are involved with professionally

E) Ship all Internet-connected PCs with an included cluebat

 

[Saeviomagy]

If they get an at-will 1[W] automatic damage stance I will eat my hat and I'll do so without condiments.

What if it's encounter? What if it's still daily but it states that the damage dealt is an attack?

Saying that you have to hand out a daily stance as an at-will before it's better is being a bit ridiculous.

 

[Aegeri]

What if it's encounter?

An encounter stance that does that for the Knight might as well make all their at-wills for the rest of their career utterly pointless . There would never be a reason not to take it over the minor benefits I've seen their at-will stances grant.

1[W] autodamage is pretty huge.

What if it's still daily but it states that the damage dealt is an attack?

Makes it even better! Then it triggers a whole bunch of things that trigger on making attacks too.

Saying that you have to hand out a daily stance as an at-will before it's better is being a bit ridiculous.

That's the point. Fighter stances are damn good and if the Knight can take them there is absolutely no reason not to. They will lose all their at-will stances, but who cares: their stances are unlikely to be anywhere near as good as an automatic 1[W] damage or many of the other awesome stances fighters get already.

Bear in mind that I'm responding to the assertion that I'm assuming the PHB fighter can get better stances. I'm not just assuming this, I'm absolutely betting on it because unless the knight can get 2 stances at once, he's unlikely to get long encounter length stances of the quality of the PHB fighter. Otherwise it becomes this weird class that cannot use a giant chunk of its powers - you might have noticed they are all stances . At the same time, this could be the intention as a class that is "activate this stance" then roll dice for the rest of the encounter could be intentional.

So something like Rain of Steel, a fairly low level but pretty solid fighter stance is the baseline to me. Will they get a stance that can match that? Because if not, the Knight isn't even going to outdo the original fighter in something that should be his backyard.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Huh what?

People can't read, can't wait until the product ships, can't be polite and can't shut up and it's the developers' fault? In what world are you living?

I would say that nothing terribly wrong has happened so fault isn't really applicable here. What is happening is simple speculation taking place in the absence of hard data. Only if the designers are upset about such speculation is there a problem at all. My bet is that they are not. Those who care enough to speculate and discuss their thoughs are interested enough to do so, which is a good thing.

A) Massively investing in public school systems worldwide to improve people's written comprehension

B) Rigorously banning every poster

C) Immediately replying all such posts with a link to the TV Tropes Fandumb article

D) Simply not reading message boards on anything you are involved with professionally

E) Ship all Internet-connected PCs with an included cluebat

Huh. What?

Reading comprehension applies only to text that actually exists. Speculating about paragon/epic issues when we don't even have a clear idea about heroic capabilities is kind of pointless really.

Wanting a bit more detail/ having a decent picture of a class at level 1 isn't so outrageous though.

 

[Klaus]

An encounter stance that does that for the Knight might as well make all their at-wills for the rest of their career utterly pointless . There would never be a reason not to take it over the minor benefits I've seen their at-will stances grant.

1[W] autodamage is pretty huge.

Makes it even better! Then it triggers a whole bunch of things that trigger on making attacks too.

That's the point. Fighter stances are damn good and if the Knight can take them there is absolutely no reason not to. They will lose all their at-will stances, but who cares: their stances are unlikely to be anywhere near as good as an automatic 1[W] damage or many of the other awesome stances fighters get already.

Bear in mind that I'm responding to the assertion that I'm assuming the PHB fighter can get better stances. I'm not just assuming this, I'm absolutely betting on it because unless the knight can get 2 stances at once, he's unlikely to get long encounter length stances of the quality of the PHB fighter. Otherwise it becomes this weird class that cannot use a giant chunk of its powers - you might have noticed they are all stances . At the same time, this could be the intention as a class that is "activate this stance" then roll dice for the rest of the encounter could be intentional.

So something like Rain of Steel, a fairly low level but pretty solid fighter stance is the baseline to me. Will they get a stance that can match that? Because if not, the Knight isn't even going to outdo the original fighter in something that should be his backyard.

Maybe we'll see stuff like this:

Bladed Defender
At Will <> Martial, Stance
Effect: Enemies affected by your Defender's Aura take damage equal to your Constitution modifier at the end of your turn.

Or a higher-level Cleaving Assault that targets all adjacent enemies?

The problem with Rain of Steel is that it is counterproductive to the defender role: you want enemies to stick close to you, and that stance punishes those who do.

 

[MrMyth]

What if it's encounter? What if it's still daily but it states that the damage dealt is an attack?

Saying that you have to hand out a daily stance as an at-will before it's better is being a bit ridiculous.

Uh... keep in mind that an Encounter stance is virtually as good as an At-Will stance - you can have it up, all encounter long, in every fight of the day.

Anyway, we're starting to get into really weird hypotheticals. I can't imagine the Knight getting any stances that aren't At-Will - that seems his entire design. Aegeri feels this will mean the Knight is an inferior class, forever, because he doesn't have Rain of Steel. Rain of Steel is certainly good - but it isn't required for every fighter, and a lack of it won't ruin the build.

Meanwhile, could they come out with feats that interact weirdly with Knights vs normal fighters? Sure, maybe. But worrying about things that only exist in hypothetical scenarios doesn't give you any cause to criticize things as they currently stand.

From what we have seen (the small amounts we have seen) the knight seems potentially balanced against other classes. What daily resources they have, if any, is the only real question up in the air.

Can you make really effective builds based on melee basic attacks? Yes, absolutely. I was rather worried about this...

...until I realized you could build such things already. There are effective melee basic at-wills already, in the form of Eldritch Strike or stuff like Righteous Brand and the Skill Domain. Take those, focus on Encounter/Daily powers that are Immediate or Free actions, and snatch up the various feats to boost basic attacks, and you can already achieve the same benefits as the theoretically optimized Knight.

And none of those benefits are game-breaking. Really good, sure, but so are all sorts of other builds.

Would it have been nice for WotC to toss out a bit more info? Sure. But these are all just a bonus for people to give a hint at what is to come. The expectation they need to reveal information to make a fully playable 1st level character, thus severely undercutting the actual need for the product itself? That's entitlement at its worst.

The stuff they've shown looks interesting. People will be coming up with nightmare scenarios regardless of how much more they revealed. There is certainly no requirement for them to share anything at all. That's the bottom line - if people really feel that WotC's preview is so incomplete that it gives the wrong picture, and that this will drive away many of the people reading the preview, than maybe WotC made the wrong call.

But I'm guessing most of those people coming out with crazy hypothetical scenarios in which the Knight is useless/overpowered... would do the same thing regardless of how much info WotC gives out, and aren't likely to be their target audience for this product anyway.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Reading comprehension is even needed for the previews... or posts...

Actually noticing that those abilities given to us were not all of the abilities the knight has required a bit of reading comprehension... not all of the complainers noticed...

I like the Fan Dumb article... good advise for developers there^^