Realization about Essentials

So around the Wizards community boards, and also around my tables both digital and physical, there has been a resistance toward the new design direction introduced in the Essentials line of products that D&D has been moving toward.

The biggest concern posed by those that are opposed to the new design direction is that it removes the value of choice from character creation. Or phrased a different way, the new design direction strips the player of meaningful choices at every level. After examining this argument, and after watching many different players playing and different characters being built, I have come to realize that this is not the case. The new design direction does not strip the player of meaningful choices; it simply removes the substandard choices from their options. In this way, the new design direction really displays that the old design standards were merely an illusion of meaningful choice instead of any actual meaningful choice.

I first discovered this when I spoke to a player of mine who had become quite upset when I suggested that his assassin concept may have been better realized by using the Executioner version of the assassin. At first, he held to the fact that he really wanted a very shadow powered character and that the Executioner just didn’t fit his theme. A valid concern, to be sure; however, after repeated instances of his character wanting or needing to climb things, poison food, or dispose of bodies – I again told him that the Executioner Assassin may fit his style a bit better. His reaction to this was the he just doesn’t like Essentials style content because he likes to make meaningful choices at each level.

At the time, I shrugged my shoulders and accepted that as the truth – because I had skimmed through the Heroes of the Fallen Lands and Forgotten Kingdoms and I had agreed that compared to the “old 4e” these books striped away some of the characters options.

But the concept of Essentials striping choice stuck in my mind, and it bothered me for some reason, but as I read through the Wizard community forums and the blogosphere there was a sort of general consensus on that topic, so I just went with the herd. I really don’t play that often, and when I do it’s usually only for a session or two anyway, so I didn’t have any firsthand knowledge of these supposed “Meaningful choices” that all the players were feeling they lost in the Essentials product line.

Then, at a later time, I was having a conversation with another player, from a different table that I was actually playing at. We talked about my choice of character for the evening, a hybrid Sorcerer/Paladin, and how it actually ended up working pretty well compared to some of the other hybrids he had seen played. This other player had the assumption that hybrids were always less than the straight class builds, by a far margin and my build had turned that assumption on its head.

I laughed at this and began recounting some of my other hybrid builds that worked out just fine (Bard|Rogue, Avenger|Swordmage, Swordmage|Shaman, etc. ) and he made the comment that I don’t play that often, so I must just always play hybrids. He wondered why that was.

This got me to thinking – why did I always end up with a hybrid character? Did I just love the hybrid rules that much? Did the image attached to the hybrid class page just get me thinking so much I couldn’t help myself? Or was it because the hybrid system offered me more meaningful choices then any straight class could hope to manage?

Then I went through the process in my head that I usually go through when building a character. Remember, I rarely get to play in long term games, so many of my characters do not get much RP time (which I am sad about to be honest) so I try to choose a character that will be beneficial to the party first, interesting to me to play second, and fun to build third. I always built about 5 characters before landing on the hybrid that I eventually would play, and each time I would build a character it would be the same process.

This process is the one that, as far as I can tell, most players would see as being meaningful choices, but that to me, as I thought through the process, just seemed like busy work. This process is simple:
1. Pick a class
2. Pick a race that compliments that class (or human if you dislike the options for your class)
3. Pick a build option for your class
4. Distribute the basic ability array based on the build of your class
5. Choose the two at-will released to compliment your build
6. Pick the one encounter power for your build
7. Choose a daily power that fits your build (or else the only good one because the rest suck)
8. Choose the feats that compliment your build or make it workable
9. Buy equipment (usually dictated by build)
10. Name the character

After realizing this, I came to the conclusion that the old design standard really didn’t give much more choice than the new design direction. Because the classes were both build dependant, and stat dependant the actual choices presented to a character were next to nothing. Sure you could take some of the other powers or feats, but why would you?

But I didn’t want to believe this at first, and so I started to watch the character builds on the forums, and I started to ask about the characters around my own tables and at the tables of those around me.

And guess what – 90% of the time a Brawler fighter (which I am using as an example here) would take every encounter power he could that keyed to grabbing an opponent. And then he would pick up one of two types of feats: generic feats (like improved defenses or toughness) or else class specific feats. Other classes were the same – Dragon sorcerers took powers with riders that keyed to being a Dragon sorcerer, Int based Avengers took powers that had Int based riders, and Predator Druids took beast form powers that had Predator riders.

The only instances where I found this to be untrue (so far) are those off-cases were a player has built a character that does only one thing in exclusion to all else, usually what we would term as an “optimized” build, or else a hybrid character that does something unique that no other class could accomplish.

In other words, most players will pick a build of a class and they will go with it as intended. Sure, they could build a Brawler fighter that takes a random encounter power that relies on using a shield. Sure that player could build a Predator Druid that takes a swarm power or two – but from my own research (which of course isn’t conclusive) most players don’t, because those would be sub-optimal choices.

So, with this data I took another look at the Essentials subclasses, and what I found was that these builds don’t strip meaningful choices from the player. What they have done is to strip the poor choices out and in so doing, Wizards has removed the need for “system mastery” to build a workable character.

In addition to this, Wizards has included many of the “feat tax” style feats into the class features of the new classes. If a class is going to be based off of Dex, but will still use basic attacks pretty regularly why make that player take Melee training (for that matter why require that player to know melee training exists?) when the designers could just include it up front?

So in my informed opinion – All the new design direction has accomplished is to remove the poor choices, and built in the “choices” that were not really choices to begin with. Essentials just removed the illusion of choice, in favor of a straight forward mechanic that builds in all the necessary pieces so that the player doesn’t have to wade through a huge selection of bad choices and can instead get right into the story.

So now it’s your turn – do you agree with me? Am I full of it? If you disagree, I’d like to see examples of how I’m wrong. Things like how each class had true meaningful choices in the game before Essentials.