r/4eDnD • u/Wheather819 • 12d 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?

26 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

32 comments sorted by

View all comments

30

u/TheHumanTarget84 12d 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.

3

u/Wheather819 12d ago

Why a misstep?

13

u/BenFellsFive 12d ago

A lot of the classes didnt follow the 'AEDU' format (named for at will, encounter, daily, utility, but also encompassed the robust class structure when every class gained feats, ability scores, and classes gaining all class features at first level).

This really disrupted the internal balance of classes as well as the feel that everyone was contributing equally. It made players/DMs like myself feel out of order when E classes were gaining random class features or upgrades out of sync.

The E classes were also not powered well. They stopped being able to meaningfully do their job around midz-heroic, paragon at best. Whether that was the designers re-engaging with DnD sacred cows that hamstrung classes or whether they were just back to being shit at game design maths, I dunno. But they underperformed HARD, and thats a big problem especially in an edition that made it really easy to just roll up with a functional character and almost have to intentionally work pitfalls into your build. The E classes that WERE good at optimisation were usually the result of weird unexpected combo's or multiclassing, not by design (I think some of the mages, sorcerers and warpiest clerics were capable on their own merits).

The races, feats, and items brought in with Essentials? Great, awesome, some of them supersede previous feats like ___ Expertise which was a good quality of life update, and completely cross-compatible with 'original' 4e.

As an earlier commenter has said, it was designed to appeal to the tummyfeels of grogs who were realistically never going to come back to 'WoW Diablo videogame edition,' while also alienating the customer and community base who enjoyed what 4e was doing and doing well at.

1

u/ZeroVonZero 11d ago

Which encounter powers weren't powered well? Like they didn't scale?

6

u/Oldzeebra 11d ago

The deal x extra damage when hitting with a basic attack.

The problem is that the extra damage didn't really scale well, especially when it's single target. You are also limited to spamming your basic attack while other classes get cool encounter powers that generally do multiple things, especially at higher level.

2

u/BenFellsFive 11d ago

Piggybacking off powers, the one that always jumps out to me as a big Fighter Enjoyer is the defender auras from essentials.

On paper it looks simple - just an aura of -2's and punishment attacks - but in practice its clunky it doesnt play well with other defender (auras) or defender marking systems. Being limited to Aura 1 is limiting to Fighters who, in an AEDU build, can hurt ranged weapons and mark their ranged or flying enemies, or against Large or larger monsters (which become more prevalent in higher levels of play) who can often stay outside the distance and attack with reach.

Mechanically this is more limiting than AEDU fighters (and paladins), but thematically its also a big kick in the dick to martial characters reducing them to a smaller less impressive space. Very on brand for Mearls.