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I've been trying to build a Kenku Thief and it doesn't seem like they get a level 1 daily power.  Is this right or is there a bug with builder?  I also can't find any reference in any of the books as to what powers I should be picking for a level 1 thief so the builder is the only reference i have on it.  :/

Sep 21, 2011 -- 11:56AM, ToeSama wrote:

This seems more like a problem for the Character Builder boards, or maybe the What's a Player to Do boards even. But since I'm a nice guy, I'll go ahead and help you out anyways

Thiefs are designed to work as melee basic strikers. They don't get powers in the way a classic Rogue build might. Some insider content has given Thiefs feats that allow them to take Encounter Powers in lieu of a use of Backstab, but nothing to give them Dailies yet.

So no, the builder is not broken, you just cannot take any dailies as a Thief to begin with.

Hope this helps. Happy Gaming

Essentials is so uneccesarily convoluted compared to the original 4e.  I think I'm starting to fall into the "I don't like this essentials BS" camp. 

Why is a Theif a Rogue(Thief) and not just a Theif if it has nothing to do with the way Rogues are layed out in the rules?

Which forum should I go to where someone can tell me why(and how) some simple ideas from 4e have been change to be totally confusing in 4.5e?

Sep 21, 2011 -- 1:13PM, Salla wrote:

First, Essentials is not 4.5.  It replaces nothing.

Rogue is now the 'overclass', with Thief and Scoundrel as the subclasses.  Scoundrel is the renamed 'PHB Rogue', so you'll want to select that.

Thieves are Rogues because they can take feats and paragon paths available to rogues (because they're rogues).  They could not, however, take a feat or paragon path that had a prerequisite of Scoundrel.

See what I mean by convoluted?  And I want to play a Thief not a Scoundrel.  If a class doesn't allow for heiarchical inheritance then is shouldn't be an underclass, it should be a class unto itself.  Just my two cents.  Also, why are Rogue(Thieves) the only class (at least that i've encountered) that don't get a daily power? It does indeed seem like 4.5e because there are new and superceeding rules in the essentals books. 

"Firstly, none of the Essentials martial class get daily powers, so the thief is hardly alone."

But they get them in the PH1.  That sure does sound like rules being changed to me.  Can I play a PH1 Rogue as a Thief with all the Thief specific powers plus the PH1 Rogue Daily?  Who would play an Essentials rogue build if that is the case?

"They don't get powers in the way a classic Rogue build might."

"The Thief is a Rogue, and can take any options that list 'rogue' as a prerequisite because it is a rogue, as is the Scoundrel."

I'm sorry but I find that to be very confusing.  Are they a rogue and therefore can take rogue powers (ie a rogue daily power) or are they a Thief that is a rogue but don't get a daily power like a rogue gets?  Which is it?

"Heirarchical inheritance" means that the subclass inherits all of the properties of the superclass... In other words the Rogue Thief subclass would inherit powers from the Rogue base class and be able to choose from the Rogue powers, including daily powers.  In addition the Thief subclass would have additional powers that would differentiate it from a the base rogue class which other Rogue subclasses could not access.  That doesn't seem to be what's going on here, espeically in the builder where you cannot, even if you wanted to, choose powers from the Rogue superclass.  In practicallity this makes a Thief unrelated to the Rogue class in all but name.  That doesn't make much sense to me.

Now in 4e they have builds... you could make a Rogue builds that were themed, a Brawny Rogue or a Trickter Rogue, for example.  The PH would give you guidance on what powers to take if you wanted to theme your character in such a fashion.  In addition, 4e had the Powers books which game players more options to choose from such that they could create more unique builds.  Had the Thief "subclass" followed this motif, it would have made more sense to call it a "subclass" of rogue (though I use the term subclass very loosly in this case).

Instead, essentials throws a huge monkey wrentch into that system and gives us subclasses that really arn't subclasses in any sense of the term, but rather new classes that are named similarly but which don't follow the general rules of constructing a base character that was outlined in the previous rules books, namely the AtWill/Encounter/Utility/Daily power structure that seems to be outlined for EVERY class.

Honestly this change is extremely confusing.  Each "class" seems to be built according to it's own ruleset that is not at all related to any other rules followed by the other classes.  I didn't play 3e or 3.5e so I have no clue how things were handled there, but this change in Essentials seems to be unnecessarily convoluted and not at all friendly to a beginner player, which is what the Essentials line SEEMED to be geared towards.  From what I hear in the grapevine, Essentials is a move to compete with Pathfinder and to address some the issues that players were complaining about in regards to 4e.  I wasn't one of them and I actually liked the way the origian books were set up. 

Essentials, however, seem to have taken the game in some other direction, which in my opinion, seem exceptionally confusing and disjointed.  There seems to be very little rhythem or flow to it and certainly very little in the way of standards of play.  A lot of the folks I've been playing with have been saying as much over the last year and I always just chaulked it up to them being picky but now that I've had a taste of trying to comply with the essentials rules myself, I'm incline to agree with them.

 Okay, that there is your issue - when you make a character in the builder, choose "Home Campaign" rather than just making a quick character...

This will give you all of the options available from every book.

On your other issues...

 A thief can take rogue utility powers, can take any feats that have rogue as a prequisite and can take any paragon path that has rogue as a prerequisite...

 A thief is a rogue who just has different combat mechanics.

    All of the Esentials classes are built on different power structures (to varying degrees) from  their parent classes, even though they all still belong to the same overall  parent class as their non-essentials counterparts. Some of them contain the standard AEDU powers and some don't - some only get to choose the regular powers of their parent class at certain levels. However, all of them get to pick utility powers from their parent class. Each class has it's own chart at the beginning of it's description in the book which lists the powers and class features it gains at each level, but none of that does anything to change how the original pre-Essentials classes are played.
Essentials added options and new class structures, it didn't change or override the pre-existing rules. (Most of the errata and rules changes printed in the new Rules Compendium actually pre-date Essentials...)
None of the Essentials classes are particularly convoluted or hard  to understand if you read them from start to finish with a fresh pair of  eyes and without preconcieved notions of what they "should" be like in  comparison to the other subclasses within their parent class. The whole  idea behind the Essentials subclasses was to explore different areas of  character design - to create new and alternate ways of covering the same  character archetypes using different game mechanics. The slayer, the  knight and the original (weaponmaster) fighter are all just different  ways of representing the fighter archetype, even though they have  different methods of doing it and the slayer is actually a striker  rather than a defender.

    Your main issue isn't that the Essentials classes are "convoluted", it's that you most likely just assumed that a thief(rogue) was built exactly the same way as a rogue(scoundrel), and, as you mentioned, you didn't use the home campaign option on the builder to allow you to choose options from the original books, which would have looked as though the Essentials options superceded all the original classes. Having put your character together in the  character builder, I would hazard a guess that you either don't  have access to the actual write-up of the class in the Heroes of the  Fallen Lands book or you just glanced through it without reading it  carefully. The class chart at the beginning of the thef class entry in  HotFL gives a complete list of all powers and class features that a  thief get at each level.
(To be honest, these forums see a hell of a lot of questions concerning  the character builder which are answered in the original text of the  classes and feats in question but that aren't adequately explained in  the abreviated entries in the builder. The character builder is a great tool, but it's not intended to be a complete replacement for the books themselves.)


It's quite understandable that you might jump into the thief class with the expectation of having it be almost identical to the rogue, find out that it's built on a different set of combat mechanics and go, "OMG! Everything's changed! I'm so confused...", but if you look at the thief subclass from the perspective that it's similar to the rogue but presents a different (and in some ways separate) approach to mechanically representing the character archetype, and you read the class description from start to finish with the intention of understanding it simply for what it is in and of itself, it's not really all that convoluted or complicated.