New Rules Updates and Essentials Products

[NayrVentess]

Hey Guys, I've just been looking through some new stuff on WOTC and found the July Updates, which I have only just started reading but already a big change has been made, if your a wizard that is. Magic Missile is now less damage, but auto-hit, in an aim to restore the power to its classical form apparently.

Also, the new Essentials line of products is going to slightly alter the way some classes work. Most notably the wizard class. Apparently, soon all wizard encounter powers will have a miss effect. E.G. if you miss with burning hands you deal half damage (except against minions of course).

I'm still looking through the updates, I may find some more juicy bits.

EDIT: Yes I did, straight after Magic Missile in fact, Dispel Magic is now an encounter power, makes sense to me.
EDIT: Legions Hold has been made less powerful, lol.
EDIT: HA! Increasing the Tempo (which Rhian just used on Karag has also been made less powerful. No two of the four attacks can be against a single target. Dodged that bullet.... poor Tarrasque razz  

[Rain Yupa]

I was about to comment on Increase the Tempo, but you beat me to it mad  

[Saccharine Venom]

Word around the block is thus: Classes light on miss effects will be gaining more and there will be a version of "every"(starting withe 'core 8') class sans dailies. Essentially, 4.5e but without actually changing editions.  

[KamikaziFreak]

Mercenary of Chaos

Essentially, 4.5e but without actually changing editions.

So essentially, WotC pulling crap to sell more books.  

[Saccharine Venom]

KamikaziFreak

So essentially, WotC pulling crap to sell more books.

Yes and no. It's a rather complex topic, to be honest. But, more options is NEVER a bad thing. What they're doing is smarter than scrapping 4e and releasing 4.5e. They plan to let it all co-exist, and from the sounds of it, it shouldn't cause any major imbalance issues. Time will tell though.  

[SporkMaster5000]

The official line is that the essentials classes will be different takes on the already printed classes, not overhauls you have to buy more books for. So, not exactly 4.5e as far as impact, but close as far as how far reaching it's likely to be. I don't plan on getting the essentials, and they say everything in it will just be extra for existing players, but i withhold judgment of the content until it's seen the light of day.

On the rules update, the MM change is neat, but i'm nonplussed. Gerash has it mostly because there aren't really death-themed at-wills. I like that they fixed blurred step so battleminds can smack enemies trying to shift/charge. There was an argument not long ago about that very thing on another message board. I noticed the same stuff Nayr mentioned, but seems tame enough of an update.  

[Psychofish]

I'm upset about the limiting of free actions. I mean, I need to check some things and see if they're free actions, or just actions, so it might not matter for my plans to make a barbarian that gets like 4 basic attacks on a crit. Because barbarian feels like a class I should make all about gambling on rolling that 20. xp

That, and I'm not sure if this will adversely affect warlords. It has probably fixed some abusable things, but I worry it might have just made some things that seemed okay less viable.  

[SporkMaster5000]

Psychofish

I'm upset about the limiting of free actions. I mean, I need to check some things and see if they're free actions, or just actions, so it might not matter for my plans to make a barbarian that gets like 4 basic attacks on a crit. Because barbarian feels like a class I should make all about gambling on rolling that 20. xp

That, and I'm not sure if this will adversely affect warlords. It has probably fixed some abusable things, but I worry it might have just made some things that seemed okay less viable.

i think the idea was to tone down warlords that grant a ton of attacks, which apparently has been causing issue for a while. I don't know that it'll really weaken your average warlord not trying to twink out free action attacks though.