The Gaming Den

Heroes of Shadow is coming out, and it's an Essentials (4.5) product. I'm left wondering if 4.0 is selling anything at this point.

Psychic Robot wrote:Heroes of Shadow is coming out, and it's an Essentials (4.5) product. I'm left wondering if 4.0 is selling anything at this point.

The current party line is still that Essentials is 4e. Sort of.

At this point the goal seems to be to write bridge material that will allow you to play 4e material in an Essentials game. Although they have to be really round about in saying that, because they haven't actually admitted that you can't really do that now.

But Heroes of Spell & Sword is supposed to be bridge material between 4e and 4.5. It is quite funny watching their verbal gymnastics trying to get people to buy that book without admitting that Essentials isn't really backwards compatible as is.

-Username17

The silliness of making vampires a class aside, I'd be all over Essentials if it weren't disallowed from my current game because my GM being wary of power creep.

Krakatoa wrote: The silliness of making vampires a class aside, I'd be all over Essentials if it weren't disallowed from my current game because my GM being wary of power creep.

Unless you're playing a core wizard or a ranger, the power creep isn't all that bad. Paladins and warlocks actually end up pretty decent. Well, warlocks are as of right now are actually a very good class if you ignore all of that DPR crap and focus on status effects, but that's another story.

The only real thing you have to watch out for with Essentials is that non-optimized Essentials characters outclass non-optimized core characters. The reverse is also true. I mean, the Knight is actually pretty competent out of the box as far as the defender role goes, but a well-oiled Warden or Fighter will hand them their ass on a plate. Wizards can do almost everything important that a Mage can do and can do a bit more. Rogue vs. Thief is pretty close until late epic and Scout vs. Ranger is pretty close in heroic tier (until the Ranger gets their full suite of goodies and starts really pulling ahead).

Yeah, I've done some reading on the balance issues and it doesn't really frighten me so much. Nobody in our group is, to my knowedge, optimised with the collective knoweldge of the internet gaming gods, our power-gamer mercifully unable to participate because of school work. But I don't make the rules here.

I think part of the reason for the upcoming dearth of books (financial issues being another) is because Essentials is taking a sort of different tac than the Core did. Core built the game mechanics-up and flavored accordingly. Essentials is taking nostalgic or popular archetypes and building classes to fit that flavor--which is a more traditional approach, it's basically how DnD was always done up until 4th core. Even without the balance issues you might have, the problem is you run out of archetypes eventually.

That's why past editions have so much fluff and campaign material compared to 4E--they needed new fluff if they wanted to build new mechanics and classes. If Wizards wants to keep cranking out books, they're going to need to expand what's 'acceptable' for 4eDnD, which means either bringing more old fluff back into the game, or writing new stuff.

If I were in that position I'd probably shift gears and start doing other genres with the mechanics.

Krakatoa wrote:Even without the balance issues you might have, the problem is you run out of archetypes eventually.

No you don't. You have "builds" in Essentials that are basically stand alone classes. Slayers and Knights aren't really the same thing. Open up any of the old 2nd edition Complete books. Literally any of them. Any of the kits could be a "build" in Essentials. Literally any of them.

Amazons, Cavaliers, Samurai, Pirates, Beast Riders, Berserkers, Snipers, Halberdiers, Carnies, Soldiers, Dervishes, Thugs, Guardians, Monster Hunters, and whatever else. You don't have to stop ever. If you need more content you can just write more content.

WotC's problem is that they don't have a design direction, so they can't produce a classplosion to fill it out. They literally have no idea what's supposed to be going on. So they can't figure out what is needed, so they can't make stuff to fill those needs.

Writing the theme of a class that uses crossbows to increase the defensive capabilities of the team seriously isn't hard. Call it a Skirmisher or a Harrier or something. You just do it. We're talking 14,000 words and most of it is template based copy/pasta. 4e is adrift without leadership, not running out of things they could write about.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote: Writing the theme of a class that uses crossbows to increase the defensive capabilities of the team seriously isn't hard. Call it a Skirmisher or a Harrier or something. You just do it. We're talking 14,000 words and most of it is template based copy/pasta. 4e is adrift without leadership, not running out of things they could write about.

-Username17

Even if Wizards--with some justification--feels that a classplosion would have too much powercreep and/or option bloat, people get ginormous woodies over having old material supported again. The warlock used to be near dead last in any usefulness of rankings, but a lot of Dragon articles and Essentials really bumped up the usefulness and a well-built warlock is about on the level of a well-built invoker. That's a huge turnaround and one that's very popular.

Wizards could put out hybrid versions of Essentials classes. They could write more hybrid feats. They could write a bunch more paragon paths--a ton of people are complaining that the striker PPs are turkey and need to be fixed. They could write racial feats that helped support uncommon race/class synergies like halfling/runepriest. They still need to fill out that fucking uncommon/common/rare list (I actually hope that they don't, because the broken state of it makes it easier to convince people to ignore it). They could write up a bunch of rituals that are actually, you know, useful. They could pump out a bunch more skill powers. They could write more of those stupid racial option books.

There's absolutely no reason for their output to just have ground to a halt from HotFK onwards, either in their DDI or offline offerings. Unlike 3E D&D, 4E D&D is written in such a way that it's very easy to keep people dancing around the power curve. And a lot of people actually appreciate it when things on the low end of that curve (paladins, warlocks, wardens) get bumped up.

If Wizards really is directionless at the moment (and frankly the dry up of web content doesn't neccesarily mean that, though I'm going to assume it is for the moment) then it's because of the complete backlash towards 4E from the grog community. Wizards is in a possiton where they have to attract new people/attract former players back. They will not do this by constnatly appealing to the nostalgia of hardcore fans, particularly when what these fans seem to want is a prettied up clone of a broken eleven-year-old game.

Look, 3.0 and 3.5 were vast improvements over their prececesors and for their time had the most progressive mechanics of any major game. But game design has moved on. 4E, even with the epic tier balance issues, is a vastly improved, streamlined, workable system. From the before its release it was getting flack for changing things and the flack never stopped, and it's a distinct possibility that it has damaged the game's profitibility among grognards, and people unfortunate enough to take their word about the game without trying it themselves.

But Wizards does its current customers a disservice by reverting their game in order to appeal to grogs. If they can't maintain profitibility without them, then the will find a new way to be profitable. They're not going to return to write the new game off as a mistake because Frank Trollman complained on the interwebs.

Krakatoa wrote:4E, even with the epic tier balance issues, is a vastly improved, streamlined, workable system.

No. It's not.

It's just a combat system. They don't have a working skill challenge system yet. Three years in and probably 3 dozen revisions (I lost count at 20) to the skill challenge system and it still doesn't work. The only thing they have is a combat system, and that combat system is boring.

You can look at individual design choices of 4e and nod with approval just as you can look at individual design choices and shake your head in disgust. But the entire piece is a complete catastrophe. I would seriously rather pull out 1976 rules for D&D and play that. Because if I have to resort to 100% magical teaparty every time I want to do something other than "use my attack on the owlbear" then the books should at least be short.

The core books of 4e are a thousand fucking pages of telling me to just fucking make shit up as I go along for everything except the battle minigame. That is a waste of time. It would be better to roleplay in Lost Worlds, Arkham Horror, or Stratego.

-Username17

Krakatoa, your post is confusing me. If they alienated the grogs, they need to get old players back, and those players want a prettied up 3E clone...

Couldn't they make bank by selling a prettied up 3E clone?

Krakatoa wrote: But Wizards does its current customers a disservice by reverting their game in order to appeal to grogs.

Like how?

4E has thrown the grognard crowd three major bones.

1) The magic missile reversion. I agree that this was a mistake. The grognards got woodies over this, but they ended up making the spell useless. But it's useless in a way that's not obvious.

2) Bringing back Dark Sun. ... but bringing back Dark Sun was a good move. It energized the game-base and brought a jolt of creativity to the staff. People are tired of the bog-standard Greyhawk/Ninter Vale/Forgotten Realms/Eberron heroic fantasy crap. And anyway they abandoned Dark Sun to go back to their Points of Light Ninter Vale bullshit.

3) The Essentials classes. I don't know why this is a problem. I don't like the Essentials classes. They feel like a straightjacket and except for the mage are boring compared to their core counterparts. But as far as hack-and-slash goes, they are just flat-out better designed than the core counterparts. You could just chalk this up to WotC learning and that would be part of it, but when the PHB3 came out a few months prior they still had stupid (relative to their own work) classes like the Runepriest and the Psion and the Seeker. The warpriest and the scout feel a lot different from the cleric and the ranger than the runepriest/seeker did, despite having a stronger thematic connection and less customization.

Anyway I think it's petty to say, love it or hate it, that the grognards are responsible for Essentials. Sure, the naming was a pretty naked appeal to the classic gamers, but the whole project came about to try to win the hearts and minds of nOObs and on-the-fence people. Trying to give grognards stiffies was just cheap pop, because they were very obviously E-Z mode classes that attempted to have cross-fandom appeal.

4) Bringing up Gamma World. We'll see how this plays out before passing judgment, but if the Dark Sun fiasco is anything to go buy they'll have a flurry of activity for a couple of months and then just drop it for no reason even if it's popular.

Krakatoa wrote: Look, 3.0 and 3.5 were vast improvements over their prececesors and for their time had the most progressive mechanics of any major game. But game design has moved on. 4E, even with the epic tier balance issues, is a vastly improved, streamlined, workable system.

No, it's a terrible game, that fails at it supposed goals. Skill challenges (i.e., the entire non-combat part) still do not fucking work. Monsters do not fucking work, because their math was completely screwed above heroic tier until several years into the edition's life, and because exception-based design makes them a nightmare to remember (particularly in adventures, where every single opponent tends to be different). All of the worst traits of 3.X, including screwed-up wealth system, christmas tree characters, need to plan your build from first to last level at the start, and excessive bean-counting/scavenging for minor bonuses are magnified. The game-destroying combos are still numerous, and classes are still vastly unequal, despite all sacrifices on the altar of balance.