D&D 4E Inquiry: How do 4E fans feel about 4E Essentials?

[Undrave]

If the Druid was boring because it was too good when using it’s “optimal game plan”…you know you could have just played differently, right?

I did, and I was kinda bored with the rest of the kit too. I was gonna stick with the druid for a while but then he unexpectedly died in combat so I decided to spare the party the Rez ressource and went with a Monk.

 

[Undrave]

That…is good, though. It shouldn’t be a no-brainer use every turn until it runs out ability.

I still stand by analysis that playing a Monk is much more complex that it first seemed and that, in that way, it's a newbie trap. If you play too aggressively at the wrong moment you get punished because your AC and HP are below average for some who should be in melee, and if you play too defensively at the wrong moment you end up just prolonging the fight and feeling like you're just standing there. But for all that difficulty it doesn't feel like you're rewarded with performance that are worth the effort.

It's also too MAD so you always end up with the same three stats of DEX, WIS and then some CON.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Well... I present for your enjoyment the 4e Discord server, where there is a lot of discussion of playing the game online (primarily on Roll20):

Join the D&D 4e Discord Server!

Check out the D&D 4e community on Discord - hang out with 4960 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.

discord.gg

P.S. I was in the open beta of the 4e VTT. (Not the smoke-and-mirrors ones they demo'd at launch, but a real working version later.) I played several complete sessions over the course of several weeks. It was AWESOME. Yes, it had all the usual issues of an early release build (poor U.I., opaquely described controls, etc.) but being able to play 4e online without the need to do a bunch of other prep work was GREAT.

That's my biggest regret from the 4e days, that we never got a working version of the official VTT.

Yeah what they had managed to get working was really good.

 

[Garthanos]

I feel you.

One of the reasons we don't see a lot of 4e games played online is because there is no real support for it. You would think a game designed specifically for VTT use would see a lot more options out there.

Fan support is what I am seeing building up.
MapTools has some fairly extensive support and Foundry is getting support soon.

 

[Campbell]

Thank heavens for Foundry in general. The community around Foundry has really been doing wonderful stuff for some of my favorite games that Roll20 really dropped the ball on.

 

[Joshua Randall]

re: trap options - almost by definition they are non-obvious. If it was obvious, it wouldn't be a (very good) trap.

Many, many (maybe all?) games inadvertently create trap options, particularly when the game is first released.

Some games do it deliberately, though, as a way to inject 'system mastery' into the game.

4e explicitly rejected 'system mastery' as a design principle, at least early on. That's why I said earlier that it is very hard to build a bad character in 4e... there simply aren't too many 'traps' to fall into. At least in the first few books. Later on when splatbooks were being churned out, I think that (A) lack of quality control allowed some traps to slip through and (B) the game's original design intents got forgotten or deliberately countermanded.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I still stand by analysis that playing a Monk is much more complex that it first seemed and that, in that way, it's a newbie trap. If you play too aggressively at the wrong moment you get punished because your AC and HP are below average for some who should be in melee, and if you play too defensively at the wrong moment you end up just prolonging the fight and feeling like you're just standing there. But for all that difficulty it doesn't feel like you're rewarded with performance that are worth the effort.

It's also too MAD so you always end up with the same three stats of DEX, WIS and then some CON.

I can say, that the monk from level 2 and up to level 9, they have no problem at all to keep up.
Without ki, at level 5 they have 3 heavy hitting attacks, 1d8+4/1d8+4/1d6+4 is not bad at all. They are fast as hell and can get onto the enemy face. With the upgrade in tasha, they can easily have 1d10+4, 1d10+4, 1d6 + 4 (avg 26)
Compare that to the rogue's
5d6+4 (avg 22.5) at that point.
The rogue often has advantage and can uncanny dodge defensively. The monk has stunning attack often enough, which also results in advantage and has deflect missiles (at will) .
AC for both is 16 or 17.
The rogue is always ready, the monk needs short rests.

The rogue get higher sneak attack every 2 levels. The monk gets 2 ki points per 2 levels, which makes their life way easier. Each ki point if used on flurry will add 1d6+4. Dex 20 will increase damage more.

So lets do a resume: the monk at levels 1 to 9 can easily keep up with the rogue who at level 1 also does not have much to protect them. The rogue has expertise which is nice but does not make the rogue so much better. The rogue has more freedom to buff constitution, which might result in slightly higher hp, but at lower levels we probably speak about 1 hp/level = 1 to 9.
With tasha, the monk can convert spare ki to hp.
Levels 10 to 20 makes the monk fall of a bit I guess, but most classes don't progress properly at that level. Monks get a lot tougher as barbarians. Even the much praised fighter does not gain much offense after level 11, so in the end the monk does not look too bad.

I think a little buff for defense is in order. d10 or even d12 HD would nicely help.
I guess in 5.5 recharge on a short rest will be gone. I do strongly expect many abilities on a prof bonus per long rest timer and maybe a pool of KI for the rest.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

My first time starting a thread...be gentle.

I am currently active in the Survivor: D&D Edition thread on the forum and have observed that while there are plenty of participants in said thread who like 4E I have yet to see a single upvote for 4E Essentials. I never played either version of 4E, have only a cursory knowledge of 4E and know nothing about Essentials.

So, 4E devotees, what were the changes made in Essentials that you dislike?

If there are any fans of Essentials actually out there, what were the changes that you DID like?

NOTE: I am genuinely curious about this topic and have ZERO interest in starting any kind of intra edition flame war, so please lets try to keep things civil.

I didn't hate it, but I thought it was rather a waste of the designers energy, overall. Little was added to the game in a positive sense (there are certainly specific bits of Essentials that are perfectly fine, none of it is BAD really). It was just pointless. It was plainly aimed at solving the wrong 'problem' and thus was a business mistake that had negative effects on 4e overall as a product.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Wow, really? I didn’t know that. That definitely adds some context to the hate Essentials got from other 4e fans at the time.

Legacy of the D&D leadership as of that time period, ZERO confidence in or appreciation of 4e. Just try to bury it and the hope is apparently that Essentials would be somehow an acceptable compromise. All it did was irritate a lot of 4e folks, didn't do anything about edition warring "nothing is acceptable except a return to previous editions!" jerks, and left everyone else totally confused and bemused.

A true 4.5 probably would have been a better answer, but any such thing was not going to break the conceptual framework of 4e was unlikely to get made. DDI was another issue, because it seems it both didn't make enough money itself, AND cannibalized book sales too much.

 

[Mordhau]

I feel you.

One of the reasons we don't see a lot of 4e games played online is because there is no real support for it. You would think a game designed specifically for VTT use would see a lot more options out there. But because the GSL is so restrictive, there is little anyone can do to create content for the system in any way, shape, or form. It would actually be easier to use a different OGL (3e, pathfinder, or even 5e) and create a similar game design from scratch.

The ideal SRD to use would be the Archmage Engine (which is the SRD behind 13th Age), it already has the necessary maths done. Somewhere on line there's even a chart from the designers for expected daily, at-will and encounter damage at each level.