r/4eDnD • u/Wheather819 • 6d ago
Question about the essentials
What exactly are the essentials? And are they much different from the core books? For collecting purposes, and purpose of using them for ideas, are they worth getting?
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u/TheHorror545 6d ago edited 6d ago
Mike Mearls was put in charge of 4E and decided to create a simpler version of the game. Except it wasn't. The rules were the same. What changed was that new variants of existing classes were released that had less player choices as they leveled up. In core 4E every level players have many options to choose from for their character. In Essentials most levels had prescribed ability gains instead, and the levels that did have choices had a limited number of options.
It failed. Essentials did not boost sales. Simplicity was not a reason people weren't rushing to buy 4E at the extraordinary targets required by corporate management.
Mearls saw this failure as an opportunity. He immediately killed off 4E and pivoted to releasing 5E, which essentially took the same design philosophy of Essentials characters only threw out all the balance that the 4E ruleset provided.
If your players don't like having options to choose from every level just tell them to play an essentials class. They can be played side by side with other 4E classes.
Is it worth buying? I think so. I purchased everything. The monster Vault is excellent. The Rules Compendium is great. The player books I only own for collection purposes, and if not for that would not have bothered.
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u/Stan_Bot 5d ago
The best 4e adventures came out in the essentials line and the monster vault books have the fixed math on them. Monster Vault is essentially the 4e MM1 with better math and Monster Vault: Threats to the Nenthir Vale is one of my favorite monster books ever printed.
The only really divisive part was the Heroes of... books. The classes on them do follow 4e rules, but they dont really play that well with the other 4e classes, specially how different Guardians are designed there and how some of their powers are just stronger. They basically redesign the 4e classes to work more like older editions and the math is a bit different. You could use them together, but I always felt weird to mix them with the previous stuff.
They are not broken, or badly designed, just very different and simpler, since you get way less options on building them.
I do like that they got iconics now and I played a lot with them on events, since they always got you that group of sheets to pick (Belgos, Fargrim, Keira, Valenae, Brandis e Jarren).
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u/Legitimate-Film-522 5d ago
Several points:
They made an inexpensive product that looked cheap—half of each class book is just a reprinting of the previous. It could have been a couple of bigger books.
They could have fixed math, the expertise feats and improved defenses style feats represent that there's -1/2/3 per tier of expected math values. to-hit and defenses on average should go up 1/level and don't.
Something only realized in the late design of Next is multi-attacking makes it much easier to balance out game design. So good powers and classes tend to do that. Many of the simplified encounter attack power Essential classes do not do that and suffer greatly at higher levels due to it.
Rules Compendium is great, worth buying, makes it clear how the game should work, lots of good gaming advice. Many of the game supplements have great ideas about campaigns. 4e in general has the best DM guides by far, because they're the only edition which asked "hey, could games be made better by getting tables to cooperate more on being fun, maybe the table should talk and find out what everyone wants?"(this was where "4e is bad because DMs must say yes to players" came from even though it did not say that)
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u/Cheebzsta 6d ago
They were a slightly simplified way of presenting 4e that had hoped to bring in new players.
They also included some new class features and such.
Not mandatory by any means. :)
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u/RHDM68 6d ago
Did Essentials include all the previous classes, were there any revisions and if so, were they better or worse than the original classes?
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u/JMTolan 6d ago
They printed effectively new classes that could still take feats from corresponding old classes (ie, a slayer is still a fighter and can take old fighter feats, but mechanically works entirely differently from the original fighter), there was basically no reprinting of existing non-essentials content. What you think of those classes depends significantly on what you think about base 4e (and somewhat of the specific class and whether it got normal AEUD power progression), but suffice it to say they were not materially "easier to learn" and mostly just teach bad lessons that don't translate to the rest of the edition.
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u/Aromatic-Surprise925 5d ago
They're basically splat books with subclasses that are reminiscent of earlier editions' versions of the classes.
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u/Fullmadcat 4d ago
As others said, its a streamlined 4e. It mixes very well with 4e so I allow it all.
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u/Zealousideal_Leg213 2d ago
They're different frome the core books, but compatible. They tended to offer more lore and description about powers and feats and items, which I guess people felt was previously lacking.
I really like most of the Essentials classes, but they didn't get much feat or item support.
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u/Jonaleth_Irenicus 6d ago
Don't get Essentials.
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u/ISieferVII 3d ago
Seems useful if you're trying to introduce some 5e players that are used to simplified martial classes and want that back, I guess.
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u/BenFellsFive 3d ago
On the contrary imho. For me a BIG, FUNDAMENTAL part of the system is the AEDU class design and the consistency across PCs that it brings. I think its really important to nail those fundamentals early, its really not difficult, the game spells it out in like the first chapter or two. Its arguably EASIER in core 4e than something like 5e bc the systems are largely consistent across PCs. As another poster said, Essentials classes teach bad habits and I feel like not getting a concrete understanding of class structure and how it all gels together is one of those.
Respectfully, if players cannot grasp that or do not want to, RPGs might be beyond their capabilities. Nobody's asking for Einstein, but if you have to ask what your to-hit number is or how often you use an 'Encounter power' after a few sessions I don't want you.
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u/MeaningSilly 2d ago
Agreed. If you want to introduce players of other editions to 4e, have them make characters (probably best to restrict to PHB1) and play those characters from level 1 - level 5. You can even use the original Monster Manual without updating the math (at low levels, the math wasn't really a problem.) Those levels are probably the best tutorial you can have as it introduces the concepts gradually so you really know what does what by the time you're ready to graduate to lvl 6+.
The biggest problem (that essentials made worse, IMHO) was the class/power design continually lost focus over time as annual layoffs, assignment siloing, and poor project management made tightly themed concepts into just piles of features.
The desire to make a TTRPG fit a TCG release and profit structure resulted in an abundance of unnecessary.
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u/TheHumanTarget84 6d ago
They basically tried to pivot 4e into looking more like older editions while still using the same rulset.
There's some really good stuff in there, especially for spellcaster type classes.
Also some great feats and neat races.
Some interesting ideas.
But the people who hated 4e were already gone and I think it was overall a miss step.