I know the Essentials isn’t 4.5e… for one thing, the changes should be freely available for those of us with the 4e books (I hope!), but there are a few rules changes coming in those books and the related rules updates.
Magic Item Daily Powers
Possibly one of best “this is fiddly so we got rid of it” changes is this: Magic Item Daily powers no longer have a cap on how many time you can use it. Milestones don’t matter. This was apparently revealed at GenCon, but much more entertaining was Mike Mearls’ take on it at RPG.net:
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Why can’t daily items powers just be daily item powers, and screw all this milestone crap?
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“You are not the only one that thinks this is nuts. We just announced at GenCon that this rule was dragged out back and shot. Daily item powers are now exactly what they say they are.” – Mike Mearls
Magic Item Rarity
This relates to another change with regards to magic items: they’re going into three levels of rarity: common, uncommon and rare.
With rare and uncommon items, player characters can’t create them. There may be some restriction on uncommon items as well. Mike again: “The magic item rarity system prevents characters from loading up on cheap, daily items. That’s the second half of the equation.”
More from rpg.net (and corrinavatan relating the recent podcast)
“Rare items cannot be created or purchased, but will be more spectacular than what we’re used to seeing. It should be unlikely that a character would have more than one rare item.
“Uncommon items, for the most part, cannot be created or purchased by the players.
“Common items can be created or bought as normal.” –
corrinavatanThis is apparently an optional rule, but it’s definitely one I’ll be implementing. Yes, it means that you probably won’t be all able to stock up on the best magic items… but it also means the items you find in adventures will be more special.
Oh, and Mike also says: “The key thing is that the rarity system opens up a lot of design space for items again. We can make stuff without assuming that high level characters will have five of them or that everyone in the party will have one.”
The next preview article is meant to have more about this change.
Implements
One of the “it make sense but it’s annoying” restrictions on 4e is also being lifted: you can now use any implement you have proficiency with with any of your implement powers. This affects multiclass characters, in case you were wondering. A wizard with cleric powers will be able to use a magic holy symbol to boost their wizard powers and their cleric powers, or they could use a wand with their cleric powers.
Powers, or Whack-A-Mole syndrome
Essentials will bring about a change to a few powers. Wizard encounters for one thing: all of them will gain a miss effect (while keeping pretty much the same basic ability). Apart from that, a few powers in Essentials will get updates. There’s more on this (not a lot more) in this Preview article. Mostly it sounds like wording updates.
However, there are some new powers as well. Possibly the most awesome is this Wizard level 1 daily:
Slimy Transmutation (paraphrased)
Ranged 10
Attack: Int vs Fort.
Hit: Target turns into a toad (save ends)
Miss: Target turns into a toad for one turn
Toad: Target is dazed and can only move or shift. Any damage ends this effect.
Feats
The Essentials feats are no longer grouped in tiers – and some of them make PHB feats obsolete. Instead of tiers, they are grouped into categories, to make it easier to find feats of a certain nature. I’m not sure how this will work.
Melee Training got a whack, though: it still allows full stat bonus “to hit”, but only half of that bonus “to damage”. This was needed because of the emphasis on Basic Melee attacks in Essentials. It makes it less of a no-brainer feat to take.
More to come…