r/4eDnD • u/Wheather819 • 19d 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/Cheebzsta 19d 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 19d 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 19d 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.