[RPG] Combining D&D 4th ed. Player’s Handbook 1, 2 and 3

Yes, it really is that simple.

While the main D&D 4e classes have a lot of choices, one key feature of the Essentials classes (especially the early ones) is that they make most of the choices for you.

So yes, you DO get all those awesome level 1 powers in the class table. If you were playing a PHB1 paladin, you'd get to choose some of them from larger lists, but you'd still get a ton of powers and features.

If that seems overpowered, it's by design.

As I mentioned here, 4e is about heroes doing heroic things, not ordinary people scraping up every advantage in order to survive. The mechanics want you to feel cool and capable from the very first encounter.

To this end, classes get all their iconic features right out of the gate: that leads to some front-loading of powers at level 1.

What I've Found

Using only ki-focus implements has a very limiting effect. They are one of the smaller magic item groups and very few of them have properties or powers that add or change damage types. Since I was looking for being able to permanently deal one type of damage, I've ignored ki-focus implements that only have daily or encounter use damage type changes/additions:

• Fire Blazing Arc Ki-Focus
• Thunder Thunderfist Ki-Focus
• Lightning Forked Lightning Ki-focus

Of those, Thunder had the best feat support. There were damage feats for dealing thunder damage (2) and feat letting me slide an enemy 1 whenever I hit them with thunder damage (reinforcing the controller aspect of the home brew class).

Ultimately my solution was to stick with ki-focus implements because switching to any other implement type would have raised my magic item requirements. Using swords as implements would require having 2 magic weapons kept up to par and all other implements would require 3 magic items total (needing to use both a silvered and non-silvered sword to get the most of my class features).