The Gaming Den

Lago PARANOIA wrote: Essentials, from what we've seen, is a much larger change than 3.0E-3.5E.

How so? I honestly haven't seen anything changed at all in Essentials. The classes all have new names, so they don't replace anything, I haven't seen any mechanics altered in any way.

Essentials is basically just the PHB4.

The Rogue and Warrior stuff has been a pretty big change, switching the standard 4E power format out for effects you apply to your basic melee attack and no daily powers. In play it's probably doesn't really feel that different, but mechanics wise it is a major shift.

The Cleric and Wizard stuff so far, on the other hand, could have been just tossed right into' X' Power 2 without anyone raising an eyebrow.

I actually like that the special abilities are keyed off of basic attacks. That seems more in line with what I would have done in designing 4e.

sake wrote:The Rogue and Warrior stuff has been a pretty big change, switching the standard 4E power format out for effects you apply to your basic melee attack and no daily powers. In play it's probably doesn't really feel that different, but mechanics wise it is a major shift.

The Cleric and Wizard stuff so far, on the other hand, could have been just tossed right into' X' Power 2 without anyone raising an eyebrow.

Even the Wizard is pretty out-there as far as a 4e class goes. He just does not do the ability replacement thing. Like, at all. The spell preparation gimmick is kinda the same, and actually works way better. Both conceptually and in play. But nevertheless, the Essentials Wizard really aggressively does not use major portions of the universal advancement scheme.

-Username17

The fun part about essentials is that it's still more compatible to 4e than pathfinder to 3.5.

malak wrote:The fun part about essentials is that it's still more compatible to 4e than pathfinder to 3.5.

I loled.

malak wrote:The fun part about essentials is that it's still more compatible to 4e than pathfinder to 3.5.

I don't buy that. Yeah, from how it looks like Pathfinder is going to be seeing some major problems once someone brings a Spell Compendium to table, but it's not like the game implodes in on itself.

If you have an Essentials Wizard or Fighter you straight up cannot use much of the material in Arcane or Martial power.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:

malak wrote:The fun part about essentials is that it's still more compatible to 4e than pathfinder to 3.5.

I don't buy that. Yeah, from how it looks like Pathfinder is going to be seeing some major problems once someone brings a Spell Compendium to table, but it's not like the game implodes in on itself.

If you have an Essentials Wizard or Fighter you straight up cannot use much of the material in Arcane or Martial power.

On the other hand, if you have a 3.5 monster, you straight up cannot use it with PF, or the other way around, without recomputing stats. 4EE will be able to use any 4E monster as-is.

And what about the fact that PF races get better ability bonuses, and extra health and skill points? E.g. Barbarians, Clerics and Rogues are different enough in PF that many PrC requirements would have to be rewritten or the PrCs itself adapted.

And most of the MM1 monsters are considered obsolete, but supposedly the MM3 and Essentials monsters will be 'fixed'.

You could also look at the 3.5 ranger as simply a 'new build' of the 3.0 ranger, for that matter.

malak wrote:
On the other hand, if you have a 3.5 monster, you straight up cannot use it with PF, or the other way around, without recomputing stats. 4EE will be able to use any 4E monster as-is.

And what about the fact that PF races get better ability bonuses, and extra health and skill points? E.g. Barbarians, Clerics and Rogues are different enough in PF that many PrC requirements would have to be rewritten or the PrCs itself adapted.

Yeah. While they've now officially stated that the stats in the Monster Manual I are basically wrong, they are still the correct kind of numbers to play in an Essentials game. They don't do nearly enough damage and they have too many hit points and no one likes them. But despite the poor design, they do in fact have numbers in for all the defenses and attributes that an Essentials character would need to fight one.

A 3.5 Monster, whether it is a sample of good monster design or bad, simply does not have the correct labels on the numbers on its writeup to participate in a fight with a Pathfinder character. Ergo, Essentials is more compatible with 4e than Pathfailure is with 3.5.

-Username17

Doom wrote:And most of the MM1 monsters are considered obsolete, but supposedly the MM3 and Essentials monsters will be 'fixed'.

Wait... WTF... seriously???

A third of all your core creature baddies... the ones that come in the slipcase, that's still on sale, the ones that *most* people will purchase when starting out.... is *obsolete*???

Fuck D&D.

Fuck Wizards of the Coast.

Just... fuck them. I'm sick of this shit. I hope Essentials burns. I want to piss on it's ashes. Nothing good has come out of 4th edition D&D that I can see, and what might have been good that has come out gets errata'd into shit. It's like they sat down and said "how can we run this property into the ground so deep that we won't even have to throw dirt over it to bury it."

While they've now officially stated that the stats in the Monster Manual I are basically wrong, they are still the correct kind of numbers to play in an Essentials game. They don't do nearly enough damage and they have too many hit points and no one likes them.

Can I get a quote on this?

sake wrote:The Rogue and Warrior stuff has been a pretty big change, switching the standard 4E power format out for effects you apply to your basic melee attack and no daily powers. In play it's probably doesn't really feel that different, but mechanics wise it is a major shift.

The Cleric and Wizard stuff so far, on the other hand, could have been just tossed right into' X' Power 2 without anyone raising an eyebrow.

Well, this certainly fucks over any chance of multiclassing you may have, but besides that, there really isn't any reason beyond balance why an essentials mage can't be traveling with a 4E warlock and a 4E barbarian.

What I'm saying is that the fact essentials exists doens't change your 4E characters at all, you don't have to "convert" like you did with 3.5. In 3.5 some of your spells changed, ride by attack didn't work anymore, some classes had their abilities shifted and so on.

With Essentials, none of that actually happens. The 4E fighter is exactly the same.

Psychic Robot wrote:

While they've now officially stated that the stats in the Monster Manual I are basically wrong, they are still the correct kind of numbers to play in an Essentials game. They don't do nearly enough damage and they have too many hit points and no one likes them.

Can I get a quote on this?

Look at the latest errata/update. They replaced the monster damage tables and monster HPs.

Good Lord.

...Wow.

I also like how they have to errata previous errata.

TheFlatline wrote:...WoW.

Fixed.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:

sake wrote:The Rogue and Warrior stuff has been a pretty big change, switching the standard 4E power format out for effects you apply to your basic melee attack and no daily powers. In play it's probably doesn't really feel that different, but mechanics wise it is a major shift.

The Cleric and Wizard stuff so far, on the other hand, could have been just tossed right into' X' Power 2 without anyone raising an eyebrow.

Well, this certainly fucks over any chance of multiclassing you may have, but besides that, there really isn't any reason beyond balance why an essentials mage can't be traveling with a 4E warlock and a 4E barbarian.

What I'm saying is that the fact essentials exists doens't change your 4E characters at all, you don't have to "convert" like you did with 3.5. In 3.5 some of your spells changed, ride by attack didn't work anymore, some classes had their abilities shifted and so on.

With Essentials, none of that actually happens. The 4E fighter is exactly the same.

The only reason that the 4e classes don't change with Essentials is that they've been "officially errataed" to the Essentials version in the months leading up to the release of Essentials. If you made a 4e character a year ago using the PHB1, and then you opened up the same character - using all the same selections - a month after Essentials drops, he would be different in all kinds of ways.

It's not all just nerfs, either. There are huge and perplexing lateral shifts in the ways abilities work and interact. The Tiefling retribution thing is now a fire attack instead of being a boost to your next attack. Magic Missile is now an auto-hit for bullshit damage instead of an accurate low-damage attack. And beyond that, some things just got better. The Rogue's level 2 Tumble utility power has been improved to send you twice as far so that it is still compatible with the Essentials Rogue's "Tumbling Trick" level 1 ability. And so on. The last two rapid-fire errata documents have a combined length of 56 pages - and that length should be combined, because each of those documents is stand alone - to find out all the errata you need to go back into the archives and find all the separate documents - or wait until Essentials is released to supposedly have all that information collected in the Rules Compendium.

-Username17

There is one thing that they changed for Essentials that I like:

Defender Auras instead of Marks.

Nah, I don't like auras AT ALL. They are too "come and get it"-y to make any sense.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:
Well, this certainly fucks over any chance of multiclassing you may have, but besides that, there really isn't any reason beyond balance why an essentials mage can't be traveling with a 4E warlock and a 4E barbarian.

What I'm saying is that the fact essentials exists doens't change your 4E characters at all, you don't have to "convert" like you did with 3.5. In 3.5 some of your spells changed, ride by attack didn't work anymore, some classes had their abilities shifted and so on.

With Essentials, none of that actually happens. The 4E fighter is exactly the same.

But you could just as easily say the 3.0 ranger is exactly the same...the 3.5 ranger is "just another build".

On the other hand, what are the rules for a knight/thief hybrid?

Doom wrote: But you could just as easily say the 3.0 ranger is exactly the same...the 3.5 ranger is "just another build".

On the other hand, what are the rules for a knight/thief hybrid?

Yeah, but the fact that the class has the same name, means that it's meant to replace the old one. Like how the new spell compendium Spikes replaces the previous ones.

That's totally different than just creating 5 arbitrarily new spells or classes.

Why do we have to play with their changes?

-Crissa

Obsolescence.

Kind of like oWOD. If you don't want to drop 50 bucks on a ten year old core book, you play nWOD (and spend 60 bucks on the blue & red book, but I digress)

That, and character building past a few levels really requires their software, or it's a time consuming chore where you might miss something, or miss an errata if you're foolish enough to use their actual printed books.