D&D Essentials: Ask me anything.

[Red Archon]

The class sucked anyway.

[Psychic Robot]

Oh good grief... how does knowing where the sword that is swinging at your head was made somehow make you harder to hit?

Because you're Just As Planning it or something. I don't know.

The class sucked anyway.

Let's not start that discussion again.

[hogarth]

Hmm. Yep, I hadn't considered that.
I don't think you'll notice going from a 6+ to an 8+ that much even if your soft NAD is targeted all the time [..]

You'll notice it two times out of every twenty attacks, on average, just the same as if it were going from a 16+ to an 18+.

[CCarter]

Yes. Heaven forbid the wizard have abysmal AC and all.

Oh good grief... how does knowing where the sword that is swinging at your head was made somehow make you harder to hit?

I believe being unconscious on the ground only gives you a -5 to your defenses, so your superior intellect still helps you avoid attacks when you're bleeding out in the corner...

@hogarth: True. In practice though, while its two times out of twenty , how long it will take to drop something depends practically on the final percentage of attacks that hit.
If you're rolling to hit once per round, and need say 4 successful hits to drop something, it will take you:

at 6+ (75% to hit): 4 attacker rolls (rounds) per 3 successful hits to defender...approx 5 rounds to drop the target (actually 5.33)
at 8+ (65% to hit): 1.5 rolls per successful hit...approx 6 rounds (6.12)
at 11+ (50% chance to hit)...2 rolls per hit...8 rounds
at 16+ (25% chance to hit)...4 rolls per hit...16 rounds.
at 18+ (15% to hit)......around 7 rolls per hit...27 rounds to kill (26.67)
at 20: (5% to hit): 20 rolls per hit...80 rounds to kill defender

The formula I used here is:
length of combat = [base # hits to drop] x 100/ successful attack %

I used 4 hits just for ease of calculation - I don't know how long it takes to pop an Essentials character - but it should work the same, proportionally, regardless. In the example above shifting from 6+ to 8+ would make you able to take one additional combat round, while moving from 18+ to 20 there's a blowout in how long you'd last.

[hogarth]

@hogarth: True. In practice though, while its two times out of twenty , how long it will take to drop something depends practically on the final percentage of attacks that hit.

I don't know what to tell you. The difference between "very difficult to hit" and "slightly more difficult to hit" doesn't feel qualitatively different to me than "very easy to hit" and "slightly more easy to hit". It's still a bad idea to try to fireball a (3.5) monk to death -- Lightning Reflexes or no Lightning Reflexes.

AC is a slightly different matter, since AC targeting attacks are more common.

[K]

I've been seeing commercials for it on Hulu.

Is the art 1970s retro, or is that just the commercial?

[Sashi]

Just the commercials. It's really lame that way. The actual books have standard WotC-level art.

I would have actually given them mad props for going with simple B&W retro-style art that was sprinkled through the entire book like Sergio Aragones in Mad.

[Koumei]

TheFlatline, in 3.5 Factotum stacked Int into Init, AC, jumping/swiming, etc.

Don't forget "Climbing into people's assholes" checks (er, Escape Artist). Factotum plays a huge role in that build. And that's the most productive thing it's ever done.

So wait, the game isn't actually printed B&W on shitty photocopy paper? I understand the whole "grognard appeal" but I'm glad they're not deciding "Let's just be fucking cheap and pretend we're in the '80s".

[CCarter]

@hogarth: True. In practice though, while its two times out of twenty , how long it will take to drop something depends practically on the final percentage of attacks that hit.

I don't know what to tell you. The difference between "very difficult to hit" and "slightly more difficult to hit" doesn't feel qualitatively different to me than "very easy to hit" and "slightly more easy to hit". It's still a bad idea to try to fireball a (3.5) monk to death -- Lightning Reflexes or no Lightning Reflexes.

AC is a slightly different matter, since AC targeting attacks are more common.

Well, you probably wouldn't 'feel' it so much unless you had to attack the same defense/save over and over...but yeah the effect is there.
Its hidden a bit since as Sashi noted, the GM can dodge the problem of PCs with super-hard defenses just by hitting a different defense. I guess there's also all the feats and powers that do damage on misses, too.

I suppose the 3.5 monk could be off the RNG even without the +2, making Lightning Reflexes pointless. I gather that 4.0 has much tighter bonus and DC scaling though, so that PCs are more inclined to fight over tiny +1 bonuses.

[Sashi]

4E takes a much stronger "top down" approach to combat modifiers. In 3.5 a character's AC/Saves/attack bonus can vary by fairly surprising amounts just by having a player choose to buy a few items with large bonuses rather than a large number of items with small bonuses.

So a 4E character will pick up a +4 armor and a feat for +1 AC, instead of having the choice between a +4 armor or a +3 armor and +2 ring of deflection.

[Koumei]

Actually, I have a question. Is it compatible with 3.X, AD&D, OD&D and the Choose Your Own Adventure colouring book? Or did they lie again?

[Shazbot79]

I've played a bit of 4e, my biggest complaint is that combat takes so damn long. I think in a 4 hour session we could squeeze out two fights and each fight consisted of using our encounter powers first round then spamming at-wills. Has essentials mitigated this at all?

I've played quite a bit of Essentials since Heroes of the Fallen Lands came out...combat definitely moves a lot faster than the core 4E game that I'm in.

Part of this is because turns go by a lot quicker, since there's a lot less flipping through power cards, and also because there is less emphasis on "Fuck you, DM!" immediate actions.

There is still the problem of PC's unloading their big guns and gradually powering down to their at-wills over the course of combat...there's nothing that the 4E ruleset can really do to quell this habit.

So far, I find that I enjoy Essentials more than core 4E. However, initially I really enjoyed 4E around the time of it's launch until a constant barrage of player supplements and Dragon articles turned the rules into a bloated mass akin to Tetsuo at the end of Akira, that most players won't even try to navigate without the aid of the character builder. Essentials is supposedly more self-contained...which I would enjoy...but eventually it may become just as bloated.

[malak]

I've played quite a bit of Essentials since Heroes of the Fallen Lands came out...combat definitely moves a lot faster than the core 4E game that I'm in.

That's mainly due to the new MM3 stats for monsters - less HP, more damage. It's also in errata'd 4E.

There is still the problem of PC's unloading their big guns and gradually powering down to their at-wills over the course of combat...there's nothing that the 4E ruleset can really do to quell this habit.

Well, the DM can fix this, by using dynamic encounter design - that is, not all the foes are there in the first round already... aka "unleash the hounds".

[Shazbot79]

That's mainly due to the new MM3 stats for monsters - less HP, more damage. It's also in errata'd 4E.

Yeah...we play with those revisions in my core 4E game as well...and combat is still notably faster in the Essentials game.

When our party was 1st level, we took on a solo in 3 rounds.

Well, the DM can fix this, by using dynamic encounter design - that is, not all the foes are there in the first round already... aka "unleash the hounds".

True. A good DM can fix this...I often plan encounters along these lines. I also shy away from staging the BBEG in the absolute last room of the bottom most layer of the dungeon....players are more willing to part with dailies when they're not sure which fight is the boss fight.

Anyway, I don't think that the power structure in 4E is a problem per se...but players unloading powers from the top down does make things feel monotonous and generic.

Anyway, as an aside, I really don't have a problem with a game where combats last like 10 rounds on average...as long as every one of those rounds is interesting. What I don't want is a 10 round combat where all of the dynamic tactical elements are expended in the first 5 rounds, and the last 5 rounds are spent chiseling away at a few stragglers with at-will powers.

[malak]

That's mainly due to the new MM3 stats for monsters - less HP, more damage. It's also in errata'd 4E.

Yeah...we play with those revisions in my core 4E game as well...and combat is still notably faster in the Essentials game.

When our party was 1st level, we took on a solo in 3 rounds.

Yeah, ok, it's faster because the melee chars in essentials have about the same amount of options as melee chars in 3.5..


But this is not necessarily a bad thing - I know I can give a newbie a slayer or thief and they can play it within no time. None of the indecisive looks at the different power cards, slowing everything down.

I also prefer the auras to the previous marking, as it's less fiddly...

[Princess]

Don't forget "Climbing into people's assholes" checks (er, Escape Artist). Factotum plays a huge role in that build.

DC 80 Escape Artist checks? Sure.

In 3.5 a character's AC/Saves/attack bonus can vary by fairly surprising amounts just by having a player choose to buy a few items with large bonuses rather than a large number of items with small bonuses.

I'd add that sudden deep in to some classes have "surprising" effects too. Well, I think classes with "4 levels cool, 16 levels suck" are examples of being bad game design, but nonetheless builds with something from Pal2-4, Fighter2, Barbarian1-2, Monk2, Swashbuckler3 list are quite popular.

[CapnTthePirateG]

What kind of magical effects can you drop with arcana? Anything besides illusions? And are there any open-ended, flexible effects such as silent image?

[Psychic Robot]

What kind of magical effects can you drop with arcana? Anything besides illusions? And are there any open-ended, flexible effects such as silent image?

There's actually quite a bit of interesting things you can do. There's instant friends, which basically works as charm person for 1d4 hours and has an amnesia effect; spectral image lets you create an illusion of up to Medium size; arcane gate lets you create a rift in space that treats two distant squares as being adjacent adjacent for purposes of movement; blur gives you a +2 bonus to defenses and you're invisible to creatures more than five squares from you; beneficent transformation lets you "borrow" a special ability from a monster (nothing too powerful, but things like fly speed, blindsight, tremorsense, etc.).

However, something that rubs me the wrong way is the entire skill system. After going back over it, it's a giant "fuck you" to pretty much everyone. There are DCs listed at each level--easy, moderate, and hard. Rather than having set DCs for specific things--such as manacles being a DC 25 skill check to escape--Essentials decided to turn the game into a tremendous Oblivion-esque rubberband. A few things have statics DCs (such as making Heal checks to let someone use his second wind), but Essentials favors improvisation and gives examples of such.

For instance, with Intimidate, cowing an unruly crowd is a hard DC. Rather than doing the obvious--such as making it an Intimidate vs. Will check--WotC decided that it would be nice to have the mob's DC scale with you by level. So, by epic tier, when you've moved from Fighter Bob to Sir Bob the Valorous Lord, telling a bunch of peasants to fuck off is as difficult as it was when you were a step above a mud farmer.

Blech. No, thanks. But if the skills are already "lol make it up," I guess it won't be much of a stretch from there to completely overhaul the system into something that isn't retarded.

[mean_liar]

To me, that was the most offensive thing about 4e's skills. Too bad they kept it, though why they kept it is beyond me.

[Lago PARANOIA]

If the reactions on rpg.net are anything to go by, people are PISSED at WotC's decision to switch to an online-only mode for their character builder--which was one of the few selling points of that edition.

Looks like 4E just pissed away any goodwill they got from Essentials.

[Username17]

If the reactions on rpg.net are anything to go by, people are PISSED at WotC's decision to switch to an online-only mode for their character builder--which was one of the few selling points of that edition.

Looks like 4E just pissed away any goodwill they got from Essentials.

Rpg.net is a fucking hole, and people get pissed at wholly random shit over there. But still, I'm not sure I'm surprised that 4rries would be pissed at change of any kind.

That being said, wouldn't having the character builder run in a browser window be a GOOD thing? It should run on like Macs and shit now, right?

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Rpg.net is a fucking hole, and people get pissed at wholly random shit over there. But still, I'm not sure I'm surprised that 4rries would be pissed at change of any kind.

If a competent company was helming the change then it wouldn't be all that bad of a change. I mean, this is 2010. Unless you're doing something like commuting 90 minutes on a train or a military guy stationed overseas you can get Internet if you want.

But seriously, have you seen the Compendium or the Monster Builder? Those things fucking suck and I honestly can't blame 4rries for feeling dread at the thought of switching over. WotC just flat-out sucks at their online offerings--unless WotC shows a competence with their web apps that they have not shown at all previously I don't see this going anywhere good.

But the takeaway from this is that 4E continues to go down the death spiral. My prediction of 4E getting axed Spring of 2012 looks really optimistic now.

[Murtak]

That being said, wouldn't having the character builder run in a browser window be a GOOD thing? It should run on like Macs and shit now, right?

"online-only" is the bad thing. If you have the builder running on your computer you can be pretty sure you will still have it tomorrow or next year, not to mention you will be able to use it without net access.

[hogarth]

That being said, wouldn't having the character builder run in a browser window be a GOOD thing? It should run on like Macs and shit now, right?

"online-only" is the bad thing. If you have the builder running on your computer you can be pretty sure you will still have it tomorrow or next year, not to mention you will be able to use it without net access.

Wasn't it the case that you could pay for one month's access to the on-line service and it would permanently update the locally installed version of the Character Builder? Changing it to a subscription-only program would be a definite downgrade, then.

[Doom]

Rpg.net is a fucking hole, and people get pissed at wholly random shit over there. But still, I'm not sure I'm surprised that 4rries would be pissed at change of any kind.

That being said, wouldn't having the character builder run in a browser window be a GOOD thing? It should run on like Macs and shit now, right?

-Username17

How is it you're not banned for that post? I was writing for them and got instabanned for even lightly questioning Darren's incredibly craven behavior.

And in an unrelated note, how comes there's no "Diary of Failure--Essentials" thread yet? I'm guessing because nobody around here actually cares enough about the game to know it well enough to trash it yet.