Looking at the “Essentials” Warlord

When Dungeons & Dragons 4E was first released, I found the warlord to be the most intriguing addition.  So I was intrigued when Dragon announced the new Class Compendium feature, which converts classes to the Essentials format, was tackling the warlord.

I assumed we would see a new build of the warlord which favored melee basic attacks over powers.  After all, the knight and slayer builds of the fighter, the executioner build of the assassin, and thief build of the rogue all took this tack.

What I was not expecting the changes to be as minimal as they were.  I would hesitate to call the new marshal build a build at all.    Instead, it seems to simply be a rewriting of the tactical warlord and the inspiring warlord using the new Essentials format.

The few mechanical differences seem to merely be errata rather than any attempts at new mechanics.  The power selection is slightly different than the Player’s Handbook Warlord, but is more of a “greatest hits” from existing source books than anything new.

The Good

I like the existing warlord, so the fact that the marshal build changes nothing isn’t really a negative to me.

The Bad

Frankly, I am confused as to what the point of the Class Compendium feature is.  I assumed it was going to provide new builds for existing classes which were similar to the new builds created for Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms and Heroes of the Fallen Lands.  Instead, all we seem to have gotten is a change in the layout with a little errata thrown in.

As content for Dragon goes, that seems a little thin.

Rule Updates May Be Getting Out of Hand

Looking back at the early days of Dungeons & Dragons, Unearthed Arcana was a harbinger of how the game would be sold in the future.  While there had been different versions of the game published over the years (e.g., Basic D&D, Advanced D&D, etc.), once the “core” rules were established for a version they remained relatively unchanged.  Most D&D products were aimed at the DM, like adventure modules or the occasional monster book.

Unearthed Arcana, expanded the game with new races, classes and spells.  Unlike the majority of D&D products up to that point, it targeted the players as well as the Dungeon Master.  Since the number of D&D players outnumbers the number of Dungeon Masters, this was a brilliant marketing decision.  Not surprisingly, Unearthed Arcana was a harbinger of things to come.

It was also full of errors.

Back in the early days of D&D, errata was rare and wondrous thing.  As a result, I remember how shocked I was at age 13 when Dragon Magazine presented a full four pages of errata for the recently released Unearthed Arcana supplement! 

(Of course, in those days you were expected to cut the errata out of the magazine and paste it into your book.  I admit that I did so dutifully.)

While many of the errors in Unearthed Arcana were a result of poor editing, there was also a decent amount of rule clarification in the mix.  I think this is part and parcel of expanding and updating an existing rule set.  The more you add to the rules, the more likely it is that one of these additions will react poorly with previously existing rules. 

In this way it is sort of like the potion miscibility table.

Fast-forwarding twenty-five years, it is not surprising that rule updates are increasingly common.  Many people have noted that there have been so many rules updates to the original 4E Player’s Handbook that it is now functionally obsolete.

For fun I decided to use random.org to pick 5 pages out of the Player’s Handbook and see how many had been updated according to the D&D Compendium.  Here are my results:

p. 85 – The power Warriors Urging has been revised twice.

p. 102 – The power Healing Font has been revised.

p. 202 – The feat Action Recovery has been revised.

p. 290 – No revisions

p. 304 – No revisions

That is 3 out of 5 pages chosen randomly out of a 320 page book.  I know this is hardly scientific, but that seems a bit much. Of course, this situation is only going to get worse when all the upcoming slew of updates related to D&D Essentials come out. 

(I can just imagine how much glue I would have to go through if I still was cutting and pasting out of Dragon)

So I guess the entire furor over whether D&D Essentials is a stealth edition or whether Wizards of the Coast is going to stop printing the core rule books is a bit of a tempest in a teapot-- The new edition is already here!

Why exclusive content in D&D Insider is a bad idea

June’s Ampersand article talks about upcoming exclusive content and debut content in D&D Insider.  Exclusive content is only available to subscribers to D&D Insider.  It will not appear in any core rulebooks or supplements.  Debut content is slated to appear in an upcoming product, like next years Player’s Handbook 3.  It will appear up to a year in advance of being published.

I am not sure how I feel about the exclusive content.  This may sound weird coming from me, since anyone who listens to the Lords of Tyr podcast knows that I often have said that D&D Insider needs more content to be successful.  After all, more content means more perceived value and more perceived value leads to more subscribers.

There are several flaws with the concept of exclusive content though.  To illustrate my point I will talk about the upcoming exclusive race and class mentioned in Ampersand: the revenant (an exclusive race) and the assassin (an exclusive class).

At first blush, making this content exclusive to D&D Insider seems like a great idea.  After all, the only way you will be able to play a revenant assassin in your game would be to have access to D&D insider.  As a result it should increase the perceived value of the D&D insider.

The problem is that they are building a wall around that content.   PHB 3 will contain no revenant feats.  Martial Power 3 will contain no additional builds or powers for the assassin.  As a result, these races and classes will not grow the way that non-exclusive content will.  This will eventually become noticeable, especially with the 4E “everything is core” philosophy.

I suppose it would be possible for D&D Insider to add feats, powers, and builds for the exclusive races and classes as the new books are released. The problem is that as the exclusive content grows, so do the man hours required to do this.  This will quickly become untenable to maintain.

With this in mind, Bill Slavicsek may still be right and the revenant may be “all the rage” when it debuts.  I just doubt that it can have any staying power while walled off from the rest of game.

On the other hand, I think the debut content is a great idea.  Since it will eventually see publication, it avoids the problem of being walled off.  It is content that they are developing anyway, so it has very little added cost in man hours.  It also makes good marketing sense since it helps develop buzz for the upcoming product through word of mouth.  Not to mention that the long lead time in print publications mean that debut content would normally be sitting around for months with no additional development anyway!

So more debut content and less exclusive content please.  Trust me D&D Insider, with a healthy diet of debut content and avoidance of exclusive content quackery, every thing will be fine.

Multiclass Take Two v2.0

The hybrid rules made it through the first round of playtesting, and got a major overhaul as a result.  I was a pretty big fan of the rules when they were first introduced.  While I still think 3E had the most innovative Multiclass rules, hybrid characters are a vast improvement over the limited multiclass rules currently in 4E.

So what has been changed?  First, a few of the numbers were tweaked.  For example, the hybrid fighter now gets 7.5 hp at first level instead of 7.  Any fractions are dropped when the results are added together.  This is a minor change, but probably a helpful for those fighter/paladin type combos.

Another change is that the Hybrid Talent feat has been more narrowly focused.  In the first iteration of the hybrid rules the Hybrid Talent feat simply allowed you to pick-up a class feature which you did not already have.  The new version only allows you to pick up the hybrid talents specified for the class under the hybrid version of the class.  This seems like a necessary change to prevent the hybrid classes from outshining the normal versions of the class.

A new addition is the concept of Paragon Hybrids.  This is very similar to the Paragon Multiclass rules, with the exception that you gain the Hybrid Talent feat for free at 11th level.  Honestly, this bonus feat doesn’t compare to the class features and unique powers you will be giving up by not choosing a paragon path.  However, it does seem to be a step in the right direction.

In fact, modifying these rules might provide a decent basis for an improved version of Paragon Multiclass.  Give character the a hybrid version of a class feature for class they are multiclassed into when they would normally get a paragon path class feature.  This would definitely help make Paragon Multiclass a more viable alternative to choosing a Paragon Path.

While these changes are minor, I do feel that they are improvements over the original version of the hybrid rules.  I expect we will see more tweaking as this version continues to churn through playtesting.

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that hybrid versions of all character classes from the PHB I & II are now available.  If you ever wanted to try an Avenger/Invoker or Druid/Shaman, now is your chance!

Multiclass Take Two

I consider myself a booster of 4E D&D.  I do have some issues with it though.  I consider spell-casters a bit limited, especially with the lack of decent divinations and charms.   I can get a little frustrated with its dependence on miniatures (even though I love painting them).  Most of all, I am disappointed with the multiclass rules.

Part of the problem is that I was a big fan of the multiclass rules in 3E D&D.  3E multiclass had a certain elegance that was lacking in what had come before and what has come since.  It is true that there were some issues (e.g., caster level and dipping), but I felt the good far outweighed the bad.

On the other hand, the 4E multiclass rules have a tacked on feel.  Which is not surprising, because they were!  When 4E was first designed, they made a conscious decision to prioritize single class play, and not to worry about things like dipping.  The multiclass rules were only pursued later, with an eye towards preventing the abuses common in 3E D&D.  Unfortunately, the end result left you with a character who was mostly one class with a mere sprinkling of abilities from another.  A far cry from either the layered multiclass characters of 3E or the versatile fighter/magic-users of old.

Hybrid characters, introduced in this month’s Dragon, are an obvious attempt to fix the problems with the multiclass rules in 4E.  In practice they seem very similar to the 3E gestalt character rules introduced in Unearthed Arcana.  The big difference is that the in 4E rules, where all classes are built around class features and powers, this actually makes a lot more sense.

Hybrid characters are an excellent solution on how to create multiclass characters in the 4E rules.  While they lack the versatility of 3E multiclass characters, the hybrid rules create characters that are very reminiscent of those created using the 2E and 1E multiclass rules. 

In my mind this is a vast improvement over the current multiclass rules for 4E.  Not perfect, but definitely functional.  Now if only they can make some decent charm spells!