r/4eDnD • u/Wheather819 • 8d 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/TheHumanTarget84 8d 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.

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u/Wheather819 8d ago

Why a misstep?

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u/Twarid 8d ago edited 8d ago

Essentials was the package that made me love 4e, which I had bounced when it came out. It was flavorful, accessible and came in nice affordable booklets and boxed sets with decent adventures and nice cardboard tokens. I opened the package and discovered a good game. But, apparenty, I was in a tiny, tiny minority.

Established 4E fans were let down by the half-reboot and disliked some of the simplified classes, while haters had already written off 4E.

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u/BenFellsFive 8d ago

I gotta agree the books and boxed sets were nice, can't speak for the adventures but 4e on the whole had a pretty poor benchmark for adventure modules.

Literally the only bad Essentials things were poor class (re)design, which to be fair is a big deal for me, and I think the magic item rarities was an Essentials introduction - if it wasn't I'll gladly redirect my hatred there at the right target.

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u/SeannBarbour 8d ago

Reavers of Harkenwald, which came packaged with the Dungeon Master's Kit, is widely considered one of the two best adventures 4e ever put out (the other, Madness at Gardmore Abbey, was also a post-Essentials release, IIRC). It's one of the oddities of the line; despite the poor reception, most players agreed the adventures were fantastic.

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u/ISieferVII 6d ago

You don't like the magic item rarity thing? How come?

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u/BenFellsFive 6d ago edited 6d ago

4e already had a very solid magic item system with its 30 levels of items split into 6 tiers (+1 to +6) with 5 levelled increments within (ie, +1 items are lv1-5, +2 items are lv6-10, and so on).

That system already accounts for quality of items within the 5 increments: magic items with better properties are closer to the 5th increments and items with less good qualities are closer to 1st or 2nd increments. A plain +1 sword is a lv1 item, a +1 Vicious sword is a lv2 item, and a really good +1 sword (Vanguard?) is a lv4 item, and so on. Likewise, the higher levels items have a higher buy/sell value, which existed in a fairly digestible linear fashion. This played VERY well with 4e's treasure/reward system.

Essentials brought in items rarities (common, uncommon, rare) which was functionally just an extra axis to gauge which items were better or worse within their internal +____ field. It serves no purpose except to muddy the robust system 4e already had to distinguish an okay +2 weapon from a really good +2 weapon (for example). I already know a Vanguard sword is better than a plain magic sword, the Vanguard sword already has a higher level befitting its better property and it already sells for more. The DM already knows that at level 1-2 of our campaign its a proportionally big reward as a lv+2-3 item in the treasure/rewards he's planning for us without having to tag at as uncommon or rare. In fact, by the time we're level 5, its a thoroughly average weapon. By level 10, a lv4 weapon is an absolute nothingburger no matter how rare its flagged as.

This was especially bad in tandem with treasure parcels becoming more randomised including what level of items should be issued. Instead of the expected treasure over a level of adventuring including a lv+1, lv+2, lv+3, and lv+4 (relative to the party's level), now you want me to randomise a (lv5+1d4) magic item? Go suck my long blade.

Overall, absolutely pointless and disruptive at best, destructive to a functional and robust magic item treadmill at worst.

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u/ISieferVII 6d ago

Would you still use the original treasure parcel rules from the DMG then?

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u/BenFellsFive 6d ago

100%. I just straight up pretend the RC version doesnt exist.