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General Tabletop Discussion
D&D Older Editions
What was the big difference between 4e and "essentials"?
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<blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 7451577" data-attributes="member: 37579"><p>Pretty much every class only had combat abilities. They had the various attack powers differentiated by their recharge, as well as Utility powers that grant you bonuses in combat but do not involve directly attacking. A small percentage of Utility powers weee also useful outside of combat, but these were not the norm and typically granted skill bonuses. </p><p></p><p>There was out of combat magic, through rituals. These were a lot of the flavourful utility spells of prior editions, like <em>knock</em> or <em>floating disc </em>but also <em>raise dead</em>. Some classes got the ability to cast rituals for free, like the wizard and cleric, while other classes had to burn a feat. (Which didn’t happen often as burning a feat lowered your combat power, which was needed to keep up with monsters. There were a lot of feat taxes.) </p><p>However, casting a ritual required spending gold. You spend a few hundred gold and could cast the ritual once. However, each level you got exactly enough gold from monsters each level to buy a magic item of your level. So casting rituals meant fewer custom magic items. And you had to justify having those components in a dungeon. </p><p></p><p>Players can be pretty reluctant to spend hard earned treasure.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jester David, post: 7451577, member: 37579"] Pretty much every class only had combat abilities. They had the various attack powers differentiated by their recharge, as well as Utility powers that grant you bonuses in combat but do not involve directly attacking. A small percentage of Utility powers weee also useful outside of combat, but these were not the norm and typically granted skill bonuses. There was out of combat magic, through rituals. These were a lot of the flavourful utility spells of prior editions, like [I]knock[/I] or [I]floating disc [/I]but also [I]raise dead[/I]. Some classes got the ability to cast rituals for free, like the wizard and cleric, while other classes had to burn a feat. (Which didn’t happen often as burning a feat lowered your combat power, which was needed to keep up with monsters. There were a lot of feat taxes.) However, casting a ritual required spending gold. You spend a few hundred gold and could cast the ritual once. However, each level you got exactly enough gold from monsters each level to buy a magic item of your level. So casting rituals meant fewer custom magic items. And you had to justify having those components in a dungeon. Players can be pretty reluctant to spend hard earned treasure. [/QUOTE]
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What was the big difference between 4e and "essentials"?
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