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.

Looking at the Essentials Assassin

When I first weighed in on Dungeons &  Dragons Essentials, I wondered if we would start seeing revamped “Essentials” versions of existing classes.  With a couple of days left until Heroes of the Fallen Lands and the Rules Compendium hit the shelves, the revamped Essentials Assassin has hit Dragon Magazine.

Well that certainly didn’t take long.

Nevertheless, the Essentials Assassin is especially interesting to me because it provides both a first look into both the Essentials format and into the kind of changes we will see to the existing classes.

The New Format

It is obvious that a lot of effort went into making class descriptions much more friendly for the new player.  In the new format, at each level the player is walked through exactly what choices they need to make.  This is a small change, but one that should make leveling up substantially easier for the newbie.

On the other hand, it will lead to a lot of repetition in the books.  For example, every class description will tell you that at 4th level you need to increase two ability scores by 1.  In the Dungeons & Dragons 4E Player’s Handbook, this information was only mentioned once.  Multiply this by the rest of the redundant leveling information and you have a lot of additional pages per book.

Also interesting is that the class description refers you to Heroes of the Fallen Lands rather than the Player’s Handbook or any other source.  I suppose this makes sense since Wizards of the Coast sees the Essentials line as their new evergreen product.  Still, it seems a bit like they are trying to pretend that the older books never existed.

Changes to the Assassin Class

The changes to the assassin class are more substantial than I was expecting.  The class is much more focused on martial weaponry and poison use.  The shroud mechanic for striker damage is gone.  It has been replaced with the Assassin’s Strike encounter power, which is like a more powerful Sneak Attack which is more limited in use. 

Similar to Essentials martial characters, the assassin lacks encounter and daily attack powers.  Instead, the assassin gains special abilities which make their at-will and basic attacks more effective.

While the assassin still uses shadow magic, its use is limited to certain utility powers.  In fact, depending on what utility powers you choose, it is possible to completely avoid using shadow magic at all until ninth level.

These changes actually give the Essentials Assassin a more classic feel.  The Essentials Assassin seems like a direct descendent of the AD&D 1E Player’s Handbook assassin with a few elements from subsequent editions thrown in.  I can definitely seeing this version appealing to certain people who were turned off by the previous 4E version of the assassin.

Final Thoughts

It is hard for me to separate my thoughts about the new assassin from my thoughts on the Essentials line as a whole.  The changes it makes to the assassin class are pretty substantial, much more than I would expect out of a new “build”.  It does nothing to allay my fears that D&D Essentials is a stealth edition and that all new content we will see out of Wizards of the Coast will have an Essentials bent to it.

Still, I can’t argue that I don’t find the new build to be an improvement over the original.  I am much more interested in making an Essentials Assassin than I ever was in making the previous version.

I figure that says something.

Divorcing role from class

Dungeons & Dragons Essentials is bringing many changes to fourth edition.  One that I had not heard about until recently is that the concept of role is being divorced from class.  Builds like the the slayer fighter (striker), the hunter ranger (controller), and the sentinel druid (leader) will break from the traditional role associated with each class.

To be honest, I am not sure how I feel about this.  I am normally a big fan of more customization, but to a large extent I saw the classes in Dungeons & Dragons 4E as defined by the role they played.  Both the paladin and the cleric are holy warriors.  To me, what kept the paladin from being simply another cleric build was the fact that paladins are defenders.  Almost all of the primal classes seem to be the druid as seen through the lens of a specific role (the seeker being a notable exception).

It seems like the addition of these options may dilute the entire concept of role in Dungeons & Dragons 4E.  A sentinel druid will be able to pick up a lot of controller focused powers if he chooses.  A hunter ranger might still be more striker than controller based off power choice as well.  Similar to what occurred when hybrids were introduced, this will allow the creation of more generalized characters who don’t fit well into any role.

Now I know some people will argue that this is a good thing.  They found the concept of roles distasteful and antithetical to character choice.  Personally though, I came to enjoy the freedom that came with well established roles.  Prior to roles, there was a strong belief that each adventuring group needed to contain the iconic four classes (cleric, fighter, magic-user, and thief) in order to be successful.  Other classes were often seen as second class citizens in the party, only to be added in once the iconic classes were covered.

In Dungeons & Dragons 4E, a lot of design focus was placed on making sure characters with the same role from different power sources were still equally good at fulfilling the role.  It was never a problem that our Scales of War game lacked a cleric because we had a warlord.  Roles allowed for viable groups that might lack any of the iconic four classes.

Allowing the creation of characters that are only “weakly” attached to a role is not the end of the world, but it does mean players will will have to be even more conscious of how their power choices affect the group.  If a sentinel druid is the groups only leader, then filling up on controller focused druid powers is probably a bad idea.

Nevertheless, I expect class builds that cross role lines to become more prevalent in the future.  I would not be surprised if there are some classes introduced which don’t have a single role associated with them at all.  Instead role will depend on what build you choose.  At which point the class build will become a “mini-class” which determines role much like class used to. 

Which I suppose would bring us full circle.

Who is the target audience for the Red Box?

No sinister conspiracy theories here, but I have been wondering who is the target audience for the Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Roleplaying Game Starter Set? 

At first it seems obvious: new players.  The box set only includes rules for a limited number of classes and races up to level three, which probably doesn’t appeal to experienced D&D players.  However, it also includes pretty much everything you would need to start a game: character sheets, power cards, tokens (in place of minis), a double-sided dungeon map, and even a set of six polyhedral dice.

Not a bad starting point for a group of new players to the game.  Especially if it is a group where no one, not even the DM, has played Dungeons & Dragons before.  However, if this is really the target audience, the choice to make the exterior of the box set a clone of the 1983 D&D Basic Set seems a bit odd.

Unlike me (and probably most of the readers of this blog), a new player won’t have any nostalgia for the old stuff.  Why not go with a new image on the cover?  As much as I love Larry Elmore’s art, it isn’t going to match up well with the art style inside the box.  An art style that was a deliberate attempt to modernize the fantasy look and attract a new audience by the way.

Obviously, Wizards of the Coast believes the potential for sales to people who are truly new to the hobby are somewhat limited and are hedging their bets.

The nostalgia factor will help sales with a few groups.  The biggest is probably existing D&D players who will purchase the box set entirely because the presentation, not because they actually need the contents inside.  This is not a knock on these people- heck I keep waffling over whether or not I want to buy it for just this reason.

I suppose another potential purchaser is the lapsed player.  If I hadn’t played D&D in over ten years, the new books might look a little alien to me.  Conversely, the new D&D Starter Set would look very familiar and would contain a familiar mix of races and classes inside. 

Holiday gift givers seem like another good source of sales for this product.  If I had a nephew or niece I wanted to introduce to D&D, buying this product for them seems like a much better choice than giving them a Player’s Handbook.

None of this is a knock on Wizards of the Coast.  The need to sell product, so building the new D&D Starter set to appeal to as wide an audience as possible only makes sense.  Plus anything that even has the potential to bring new players to the game is only good for the hobby as a whole.

Still, I think it is a shame that one of the best ideas Wizards of the Coast had to get someone new to try D&D is buried in their website.  This would be the “Test Drive D&D” webpage.  Free quick start rules, a couple of free adventures, and even the trial version of the Character Builder all in one place.  Throw in a few printable tokens and you have your own starter set for free!

Personally, I wish Wizards of the Coast built a “Play D&D for free” ad campaign around this idea.  Even if they majority of people who decided to check it out never bought a product, certainly the players they did gain would be more than worth it?

Then again, maybe I am just being naive.