The Essential Knight

[Terramotus]

/facepalm

I dunno about you, but I think something is marketed as a starter when it has the words "Starter Set" in big white letters on a bright red box.

Actually, I hadn't seen that cover. Is that the new one? This was the one I was aware of, which has no mention of it being a starter set. If that's the case, then that's much better. But come on, let's be honest here. Essentials is being marketed just as much to the existing player base as to the newbies. They're hoping to sell us a whole new set of books with redone versions of the existing classes.

It's one system.

And that's why they're not making multiple editions. Again, this is 4e. PERIOD. End of statement.

3.5 made my 3.0 ranger obsolete. Essentials does not make any previous class or build obsolete. That's a huge difference.

That is indeed the company line. But it doesn't take much to make it de facto false, even if WotC claims otherwise. If the game continues to evolve along the Essentials line, and the monsters continue to evolve along with them, it becomes increasingly difficult to work in the new stuff with the old material. 3.0 was supposed to be compatible with 3.5 too. And with the players, if Essentials stuff is just plain better, you better believe that it will make the old classes obsolete. How far does the game have to stray before it's basically a new edition, regardless of the company line?

I wasn't aware that the three months between September and December constituted an entire year.

I don't see anything from the release of Dark Sun to April that is a regular 4E product, except for possibly Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium. I don't think we know what that is exactly yet. Maybe Heroes of Shadow? Maybe not. A year might have been an exaggeration, but it might not be. There's a solid 8 months until the next possible non-essentials product. And we're not even certain of that. As was said earlier in the thread, where's Arcane Power 2?

And this whole "it's veering off into a wierd CCG boardgame tangent" is incredibly rich...

Yeah, that was about Gamma World.

 

[pemerton]

I don't see anything from the release of Dark Sun to April that is a regular 4E product, except for possibly Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium. I don't think we know what that is exactly yet. Maybe Heroes of Shadow? Maybe not.

My understanding is that, from WotC's point of view, (i) 10 and only 10 items will be branded as "Essentials" (Red box, RC, DMG kit, MV, 2x Heroes, 3x tiles, dice) and (ii) other than that branding issue, there is no difference between Essentials and "regular 4e".

Obviously, as you say, if a War Cleric is strictly, or even overwhelmingly typically, better than a PHB Str Cleric, the latter may become obsolete. The latter will also tend to become obsolete if the PHB goes out of print.

Whether or not this makes for a de facto difference of edition I don't have a firm view on, and personally don't care a great deal about. In any event, it's not obviously a bigger difference than the errata that we've seen, or than the new Wizard powers in Arcane Power, which tend to make a Wizard build and played purely according to the first printing of the PHB somewhat obsolete.

 

[Remathilis]

Obviously, as you say, if a War Cleric is strictly, or even overwhelmingly typically, better than a PHB Str Cleric, the latter may become obsolete. The latter will also tend to become obsolete if the PHB goes out of print.

There is one factor here your forgetting: In the D&DE classes are not necessarily "better" or more "powerful" but merely preferred by more players. There could be many reasons for this: lapsed players who enjoy the concept of the diverse new builds, new players not wanting to learn to play a fighter completely different than what they learned in Essentials, 4e veterans who like the new way of doing things, etc. All of these people could lean enough on WotC to make them abandon the initial 4e versions of these races/classes and institute new powers/builds for the "Essentialized" versions. At that point, you have a 3.0 ranger; not dead insofar as they can't be played using the newer rules, but not mechanically supported any longer.

My money though is that Monster Vault nearly invalidates MM1 Except for maybe a dozen or so monsters (like Orcus, for example). Sure, the goblin minion will be a Goblin Noseflicker rather than a Goblin Cutter, but it will be the de facto goblin minion going forward...

 

[Solvarn]

Well, it is 4.5, minus the part where you throw away your old PHB, MM and DMG because they are outdated.

 

[Scribble]

That is indeed the company line. But it doesn't take much to make it de facto false, even if WotC claims otherwise. If the game continues to evolve along the Essentials line, and the monsters continue to evolve along with them, it becomes increasingly difficult to work in the new stuff with the old material. 3.0 was supposed to be compatible with 3.5 too. And with the players, if Essentials stuff is just plain better, you better believe that it will make the old classes obsolete. How far does the game have to stray before it's basically a new edition, regardless of the company line?

The difference I'm seeing between this and the 3.0 - 3.5 switch was that there was a lot of math changes you had to account for throughout the game if you wanted to use 3.0 stuff with 3.5

With this change, from everything I've seen, you don't. You simply take an essentials thing, and start using it in your current game, or vise versa.

There is one factor here your forgetting: In the D&DE classes are not necessarily "better" or more "powerful" but merely preferred by more players. There could be many reasons for this: lapsed players who enjoy the concept of the diverse new builds, new players not wanting to learn to play a fighter completely different than what they learned in Essentials, 4e veterans who like the new way of doing things, etc. All of these people could lean enough on WotC to make them abandon the initial 4e versions of these races/classes and institute new powers/builds for the "Essentialized" versions. At that point, you have a 3.0 ranger; not dead insofar as they can't be played using the newer rules, but not mechanically supported any longer.

So... you're saying that if the majority of people prefer one build that wizards will start supporting that build.

Isn't that what they SHOULD be doing? Shouldn't they be designing for a game people are enjoying?

My money though is that Monster Vault nearly invalidates MM1 Except for maybe a dozen or so monsters (like Orcus, for example). Sure, the goblin minion will be a Goblin Noseflicker rather than a Goblin Cutter, but it will be the de facto goblin minion going forward...

What is the "de facto goblin minion" though?

I'm honestly confused on what you mean here. You have a book full of monsters to use in your game, how is it invalidated by another book full of monsters?

 

[mkill]

I think we can close this thread, it devolved to the point where the bacon thread is less ridiculous.

@Solvarn: Every D&D rulebook ever published by WotC has had errata (or should have had them anyway). There is nothing specific about the 4th ed PHB here.

@Remathilis: Really, whatever. For a week people have been whining that maybe maybe we'll never see a new power for the Str Cleric or whatever again. Until 5th edition comes out, we'll see at least 50 more Dragon issues with at least 10 crunch articles each. Given a somewhat even distribution that's 10 articles per class and race each.
I'll ignore whatever shaky announcement there may have been and just assume a clean, common sense 50:50 split between "classic" and Essentials (ignoring any compatibility between the two).
So pure statistics says that's another 5 articles for everybody's beloved PHB fighter, or one per year.

As for the MM: If you already own a MM1, just keep using it, it will work. If you don't own one yet, buy the Essentials one for the revised rules.

/thread

 

[Old Gumphrey]

Well, it is 4.5, minus the part where you throw away your old PHB, MM and DMG because they are outdated.

You're kidding, right? There's over 100 pages of "errata". My first print PHB is meaningless to current 4e, I sold it weeks ago online for $12.50.

 

[abyssaldeath]

You're kidding, right? There's over 100 pages of "errata". My first print PHB is meaningless to current 4e, I sold it weeks ago online for $12.50.

100 pages over 28 different books. Only 28 pages are for the PHB 1.

 

[mkill]

You're kidding, right? There's over 100 pages of "errata". My first print PHB is meaningless to current 4e, I sold it weeks ago online for $12.50.

Why are you telling me this? I'm sorry you had to sell your PHB, but you can't borrow mine, I'm still using it.

Or did you want to discuss the semantics with me which amount of errata page count equals each .1 dot release? So that's +0.1 = 20 pages? I don't care.

 

[Shazman]

You're kidding, right? There's over 100 pages of "errata". My first print PHB is meaningless to current 4e, I sold it weeks ago online for $12.50.

I think he has a good point. The "rules updates' have gotten out of hand, and it's basically a new edition at this point. I would prefer no errata (unless something is truly, horribley broken) to having to audit your character to see if he's "updated" every two months and digging through the online "updates" to see if basic things like movement, forced movement, skills, etc. still work the same.