Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="WalterKovacs" data-source="post: 5334006" data-attributes="member: 63763">I'm not entirely sure, but when I hear about Essentials being a new philosophy for character building I don't see it so much as "all classes will now be built this way" but instead that "we don't have to make all classes in the mold of: at-will at 1, encounter at 1/3/7 ..., daily at 1/5/9, utility at 2/6/10, etc, etc, etc ..." Even the psionics were basically the same with at-wills with enhancements in the same places as encounter powers.  If all classes were built exactly like they were in Essentials, it would be limiting and boring, etc... of course the same can be said if they kept being built like they wer in PHB I. So, while I'm not sure, I hope the philosophical shift means they are just more willing to try new ways to build classes. The essential assassin, for example, has both the martial MBA "thing" going for it, and the single encounter power that replaces your choice of encounter powers (although, in this case, it is always a single power instead of a repeated power like the rogue/fighter get). It has the at-will extras that rogues and fighters got, although these ones are actual attacks instead of stances/moves. The most interesting part for me though was the daily powers that were made "logical" with the whole poison thing. It justified the concept of the 'martial daily power' by tying it into a pseudo alchemy recipe design. And, in the big picture, the wizard and cleric are just trading some class features for others, but they still have at-will/encounter/daily/utility power structures, and since they have associated level numbers they can use all the existing content. So, even in an "essentials only" type of universe, they are still using the original class structure, they just have other ways to build characters as well, instead of "one size fits all" approach. EDIT: As far as the martial classes and compatibility goes: (a) An essential fighter (rogue, assassin) can make use of older utility powers, feats, paragon paths and epic destinies that reference fighters.(b) A non-essential fighter (rogue, assassin) can make use of the new utility powers (there are no feats in the essential book that specifically reference a class, however some of the dragon stuff from the staff fighter article, for example, coulde be used, such as the feats.)(c) This isn't the first time there have been limiting class builds, although these are more limiting than before. Any ranger power that uses a beast companion is useless for any other build of ranger, for example. Two-weapon fighting powers for barbarians and fighters generally only work for one build (they can be used for others, but those classes are generally built around two-handed weapons or shields). If anything, especially in terms of the rogue and the fighter, the new builds are a way of providing, on the one hand, new options for those classes, but on the other hand, not adding to the massive bloat of options that already exist for those classes. There has already been 2 martial powers, the fighter got yet another build in the Dark Sun book, not to mention they've been receiving Dragon support from day 1 as well. As two of the most supported classes in 4e, having builds that don't have access to the massive amounts of encounters and dailies available means they may be different while most builds of rogues, for example, will have a lot of the same power options. Knockout, for example, is pretty much useful for every build of rogue.</blockquote>

Verification