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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aegeri" data-source="post: 5553765" data-attributes="member: 78116">A working monster builder and actual support for epic in the form of more monsters seems hardly unreasonable - especially as they were succeeding at both just last year (before breaking the monster builder and well, forgetting epic tier existed when publishing MV and subsequent products).I disagree there and I think Dragon recently and Heroes of Shadow are good examples of it.Some people weren't and others were perfectly happy with it. I like the similar structure and right now, the structure of more "complex" things is being held back by the introduction of the simpler things - that's the real problem.What, you mean last year was for people who actually liked 4th edition and this year is for... who again? Because as I've mentioned before, I've bought every DnD product since 4Es release just about. Right now, I'm seriously considering not bothering to buy any further player resource related books. I'm not even sure if I want to bother with further DM supplements either like Gloomwrought and Threats to the Nentir Vale. I should find both exciting, but yet I now have this immense apathy towards the stuff wizards releases.Yet I shouldn't. I love boxed sets. I love the tokens + maps and other goodies. Yet I just can't get excited about the content anymore. I don't care what "essentials" players can or cannot use frankly. I am telling wizards what *I* actually want and I'm not going to be non-vocal about it.Good, I'd love them to abandon this cycle and go back to the way things were. Last year up to a certain point was simply awesome and this year - 5 months in - has really offered very little at all. I don't think any of my complaints are "way exaggerated" and frankly, I find your statement extremely insulting. It is a common and noted complaint that Dragon/Dungeon have declined in page count and quality of crunch in them. Admittedly, Dungeon is making somewhat of a comeback due to the Robert J. Schwalb show but Dragon is basically cut content from books. You can look at other forums to see there is a pretty good consensus on many of the mechanical points I've bought up - like the vampire, shade and binder. Another example - one that wizards have directly admitted themselves - is the CUR item system is fundamentally broken and doesn't work. When Wizards are telling DMs just to use the original system, you know it's non-functional. Then again, the original parcel system wasn't included in essentials so essentials only DMs are stuck with a non-functional system - WHOOPS. I'm sure you'll claim that's another part of this great and entirely brilliant design direction.If I was the only person disappointed with essentials and the current direction I probably would think it was just me. Given that there are more than enough people who feel the same way, I'm not inclined to believe that.Then let's look at the number of epic tier monsters in the original monster manual. In the original monster manual there are 74 monsters between the levels of 21 and 33 (Orcus obviously being that 33). There were 489 monsters in total in the book, so epic tier isn't the greatest concern of it but there was a good amount of them in there for a starting book.Now of course, it's worth noting that the monsters LEAST affected by MM3 are heroic tier monsters. So if your argument had any logic to it - which it doesn't - you'd find that the monsters that needed revision the *most* from the original MM were paragon and epic tier monsters. Of particular note are paragon and above solos - who by far are the biggest write offs in the book. As these are the creatures that suffered the most due to the poor design of creatures originally. So what *needed* the most revision from that book weren't even given the revisions they needed. So your logic just absolutely falls over.I can take original MM Kobolds and they will work fine in a post-MM3 environment. Their damage expressions don't render them useless. Orcs and Gnolls were revised in MV, but the original MM orcs and gnolls have nothing overtly wrong with them. Now certain heroic tier MM creatures needed revisions: Needlefang Drake swarms were just ridiculous. The original Wraith I think was one of the most frustrating and poorly designed monsters in this edition. They got deserved updates in MV.I cannot take many of the original paragon and epic tier MM monsters and expect them to function. They are just frankly rubbish. Their powers haven't caught up with the current monster design whatsoever. You need to redo their maths entirely (defenses, damage, multiple attacks and similar for elites, solos have to be rewritten). They desperately needed an update far more than a bunch more heroic tier monsters did. Especially as many of them already worked fine and it's not like we don't have billions of good heroic tier monsters in 4E - because we totally do!! Now MV did a wonderful job in paragon tier, but it completely neglected the epic tier and that was just really silly. What creatures in 4E were the worst designed out of the gate in the MM? Those in the epic tier. What monsters in 4E didn't get a needed design update in a product that was - essentially - a redo of the MM? The epic tier creatures.Of course the next product after is similarly ignoring the epic tier. Quite frankly, I'm not going to sit around and just say nothing this time. I actually didn't say much about the book not having epic tier monsters when it came out. I've really only become focused on this issue because Threats to the Nentir Vale is similarly not including any real epic support. In any event, I was really excited about these themes and yet again I've been disappointed. In saying that, I am going to take an interest in the other themes of course. I am curious how they will compare to the power level of the ones given here. For example, perhaps Order Adept is the expected power level compared to the other three - which actually need a boost. Who knows until we see all of them. Maybe that 0.01% chance there are DS like themes in there is actually the case and these were just more "essentialized" themes to lead off (Yes I know this won't happen, you don't have to point it out to me).Personally I liked this game more when there was a release schedule with exciting things on it, supplements adding great new options and we had a MM that supported all three tiers brilliantly and really fixed something in the system that needed it. Then the best setting that 4E has seen thus far in Dark Sun. Sadly I feel the days of great books like the DS:CS are well behind us now if this is the general quality of things going forward.Depending on what  summoning powers you are looking at, they can be minor actions as well  and there are numerous conjurations that can be summoned as minor  action. So I'm not exactly seeing the problem. Especially as this was on  a build that really abused instinctive action as much as it could.Yes, which means rangers need to  be fixed. As an aside, hopefully that is something that the upcoming  class compendium article is going to do!Exactly. Barbarians also can make good use  of it - but Barbarians have an option for an 18-20 crit range already  (albeit a daily rage, but it lasts the whole encounter). In the end  though, 4E is always going to have a huge problem with multiple  attacking characters vs. characters that cannot (it's a core and  inherent flaw in the system).So what? The point of those  classes is to be simple and be devoid of the dreaded  options that are apparently confusing. That they can't make use  of options designed to make characters more flexible is irrelevant to  them: Their design was to be straightforward and devoid of options. Fact  is, they could have themes that were more suited to them, while keeping  themes for the majority of other classes. AEDU classes with choices are  still the majority of classes, incidentally and even many essentials  classes can get power swap options as well. So it's more that the  minority of classes have curtailed the options for everyone else. That's  not a suitable compromise to me whatsoever.I like the slayer/thief and such because they are simple. I really don't have a problem with them being left alone for the people who want them and not made more "complicated" than they have to be. Also, getting an encounter power and choice of utilities, would still give them support anyway (even without being able to swap encounters, many essentials classes could still swap dailies anyway). I don't mind it  whatsoever and rather like it. It's very rare to see anyone swap out  every power for a theme, unless you're one of those terribly  undersupported classes that might make good use of them.But who cares about supporting them anyway, Wizards sure doesn't!Incidentally, an Order Adept can replace all his utilities with wizard  ones up to level 30. Just so you know, it's not even limited to just  levels 1-10. And believe me, the things I could do with a fighter with a  lot of those higher level wizard utilities. Oh boy...You know, it's the obvious fact that the Beastmaster is  rubbish and the Order Adept is ridiculous that amazes me. We are told by  Wizards we get less content in say, Dragon because they "rigorously"  look over articles with R+D. Yet they can't spot issues apparent to me  reading the article for 5 minutes. For example, what happens when you  retrain Wizards Apprentice after level 6? Do you keep your free item?  What happens if you retrain into it? Do you get that free item?It's a mess.I dislike the mechanical swinginess and limited (or  not limited enough in one case) power swap options. Of the themes  presented, only the alchemist really has a great deal of merit to me.  Especially given that houseruling all alchemical items as common doesn't  seem to cause a problem! I like that theme, but I don't like the  mechanical issues that are present with the other three: It just feels  poorly thought out and as an initial impression, I'm kind of worried  about what the others will look like.  A lot of my future reaction will depend on how many look like the Animal Master (awful), which ones look like the Alchemist (Decent) and what ones just make me look at my computer, raise my eyebrow and stare in sheer bemusement it was published like that (Noble Adept). If the others are around the alchemist in feel/flavor, I will be a lot less unhappy.Then why bother with if they can use options or not? The  point is they shouldn't be mechanically minded: Yet these themes are  going to live or die mechanically. Honestly, nobody in my games will be  taking Animal Master over Order Adept (as an example). I also find these  will have a much higher optimization and power creep factor than the  original DS themes. Order Adept, which is being beaten to death, is the  poster child here. More benefits for nothing is a lot more than 1  encounter power, then having to give up your own classes powers for  others. Especially in a setting without inherent bonuses to make taking  other class powers much easier.Well yes, it is almost a new low in mediocrity for  strikers in 4E. I do believe it beats the original assassin, so it  doesn't quite win. The others were pretty average, I mean the Blackguard  was competent but the Fury Blackguard as an example, has a poor scaling  benefit (+2 damage, +4 if bloodied) compared to the Domination  Blackguard. Also a very shoddy forced at-will power. Not to mention that  Wizards complains in their columns about not wanting to add feat cruft,  then adds nothing but feat cruft with HoS.I disagree  really. They've given me the feeling I'm going to be seeing a *lot* of  Order Adepts, not a lot of Animal Masters (0 in fact), maybe the odd  Alchemist and the odd person who might think getting a free item then  ditching the theme (say for Order Adept) is a good idea.I actually feel these themes are more mechanically prone to optimization than the DS themes are.I loved MM3 so much, it really got me so excited about the  future of DnD <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" />I disagree, I think  these just add crap. We are not going to agree on this point, but I  won't agree with you that a theme that adds more for nothing is removing  crap. It's adding it.We're going to have to wait  on this, because looking at these we know one thing: They vary hugely in  mechanical power. Far more than DS themes do. One of these IS  overwhelming mechanically and you implicitly agree with me as well  (otherwise you would not be calling for it to be nerfed). I will say  again, while DS themes definitely have their top and bottom tiers: None  stands out so hugely everyone should take it. With the way these are  designed, we're going to see defined bottom of the barrel themes and  ones that are clearly superior. Hell we have FOUR and we can already do  that. What do you think all 15 are going to look like? Personally, I  would expect further debate on the relative mechanical power levels as  the rest come out.</blockquote>

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