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General Tabletop Discussion
D&D Older Editions
Inquiry: How do 4E fans feel about 4E Essentials?
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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8440914" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>Here's the problem with it, it is VERY VERY HARD to make the classes feel distinct! You end up with a everyone doing mostly the same stuff, and 4e simply didn't invest THAT much in other ways of making classes unique. It was a mix of power and feat and class feature that did it. When you try to write the powers for this implementation, it just doesn't work out very well.</p><p></p><p>So, my solution is to have riders. You have core powers that do some useful and interesting stuff, but are FAIRLY generic. Then you have riders that each class gets which pretty much define the class in its role and make it distinct (you can have class features that aren't riders too). Now when the Knight makes a Powerful Blow with his arming sword, he can also clip you up side the head with the rim of his shield, or if a different build option was taken, maybe force you back or make a passing attack, etc. These options can also be applied to a Careful Attack, or a Sweeping Blow, or whatever. So you have a few core attack techniques, and then things you add on top to make you distinct.</p><p></p><p>The number of powers is greatly lessened (and there are a lot of other techniques for that as well that aren't relevant here) so you can actually build an entire class with just a handful of distinct riders, plus maybe some distinct utilities if you think they're warranted (but here I think the basic shared list is a stronger proposition, just basically make them Skill Powers and each character has a thematic choice of options).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 8440914, member: 82106"] Here's the problem with it, it is VERY VERY HARD to make the classes feel distinct! You end up with a everyone doing mostly the same stuff, and 4e simply didn't invest THAT much in other ways of making classes unique. It was a mix of power and feat and class feature that did it. When you try to write the powers for this implementation, it just doesn't work out very well. So, my solution is to have riders. You have core powers that do some useful and interesting stuff, but are FAIRLY generic. Then you have riders that each class gets which pretty much define the class in its role and make it distinct (you can have class features that aren't riders too). Now when the Knight makes a Powerful Blow with his arming sword, he can also clip you up side the head with the rim of his shield, or if a different build option was taken, maybe force you back or make a passing attack, etc. These options can also be applied to a Careful Attack, or a Sweeping Blow, or whatever. So you have a few core attack techniques, and then things you add on top to make you distinct. The number of powers is greatly lessened (and there are a lot of other techniques for that as well that aren't relevant here) so you can actually build an entire class with just a handful of distinct riders, plus maybe some distinct utilities if you think they're warranted (but here I think the basic shared list is a stronger proposition, just basically make them Skill Powers and each character has a thematic choice of options). [/QUOTE]
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Inquiry: How do 4E fans feel about 4E Essentials?
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