D&D 4E 4e Essentials as a new edition and 4e's longevity

[AbdulAlhazred]

Recently, largely I think thanks to the normally reliable Shannon Applecline, the idea that 4e Essentials should be counted as a separate edition has started to gain traction. I thought I'd have a look into the subsequent published books to see what happened if we treat 4e and Essentials as separate editions.

Heroes of Shadow was the first post-Essentials book and is an Essentials supplement. There is material in there that doesn't require HoFL or HoFK such as the Executioner and Vampire but 100% of the subclasses that aren't for new classes reference HoFx and 100% of the powers can be used by Essentials classes with just the books. (It probably didn't help Essentials that the Binder was so obviously terrible and the Executioner, Vampire, and Blackguard were all cool but mechanically way below the curve as was the necromancer and a warpriest domain; it's normally considered the worst 4e splatbook).

Heroes of the Feywild is a neutral supplement that spends more time referencing the PHB2 than HoFx. The new barbarian, bard, and druid variants can be used entirely out of HoFx but explicitly reference the PHB2. I don't think there is anything in there that requires either HoFx or one of the PHBs.

Heroes of the Elemental Chaos by contrast is a "both" supplement. There's a monk subclass and the Monk isn't in Essentials - and a Hexblade subclass when the Hexblade is only in Essentials.

The Dungeon Survival Handbook by contrast is a pure 4e supplement. There are things like Rogue attack powers in there that require a Dragon magazine feat to use with the Thief - and nothing that's explicitly Essentials.

Essentials was almost certainly intended as a revamp but fizzled hard enough 4e outlived it. And fizzled hard enough it only got one supplement.

This probably already got discussed, but there are some odd points in this OP...

First major point is that Essentials was a deliberately limited product. WotC announced it as 10 SKUs and stated flat out that there would NEVER be any additional Essentials products! So NOTHING post-Essentials is, technically at least, Essentials, and it is very clear that Essentials was NOT a 'replacement product', it was a line of supplementary 4e products intended to provide a limited subset of 4e which could be played stand-alone, but is 100% compatible with existing 4e material.

Obviously later supplements had to be developed with Essentials in mind as a thing that existed which many people would likely have. That complicated a lot of the development. My guess is that WotC also had a bunch of material that was developed in the process of writing Essentials which didn't make the cut, but which was potentially interesting and needed a home. Finally there are lot of things that Essentials opens up, like potentially more types of Cleric along the lines of the Warpriest, but which are not present in its limited set of books.

In the end, post-Essentials material is about 75% ignoring Essentials. Heroes of Shadow is probably the MOST influenced, it has several subclasses which are only useful with Essentials as well as a couple that can stand-alone but are presented in a fairly Essentials-like fashion. HotFW indeed pretty much ignores Essentials, I don't think anything in it references any of the HotFL/FK stuff at all. HotEC is still mostly written in terms of pre-Essentials stuff, except for the Druid subclasses and the hexblade elemental pact.

Honestly, I think the post-Essentials material is mostly quite solid. Many people have dissed a bunch of it, but both the stuff which references Essentials and the 'classic 4e' stuff is mostly GOOD. Binder is basically the worst thing post-E, and it is not actually terrible, just kind of unneeded and a bit on the weaker side of class builds. Vampires, the Blackguards, all the stuff in HotFW, it is all really solid. Some people weren't satisfied with the Necromancer, whatever. I mean, we all have our ideas of what things should be, but what it is works fine and makes sense. The HotEC stuff is quite good, all of it! Some things in these books are a bit experimental, maybe not really needed that much, like the Berserker or the Skald, but they work fine! I also disagree that the Vampire is an underpowered class. In fact, played and built correctly it is almost stupid overpowered!

And I think that really addresses the whole 'Essentials is an Edition' thing thoroughly. No, it is not. It is an expansion, much like the various 'Power' series books, just presented a bit differently and including a revised subset of the core rules. It has new builds of many existing classes, etc. but frankly you could just buy Heroes of the Fallen Lands and build characters using that and play them just like builds from any Power supplement or PHB. It is hard to call that a 'new edition', even if the classes and such are presented in a MILDLY different format from what was used in the hardback classic 4e books pre-Essentials. I mean, I can use any existing Paragon Path or ED with an Essentials class, even though they're bundled with a 'default PP/ED' and use any existing powers as well except where Essentials locks down my choices.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Essentials had a very different mentality behind how/why pieces of the game were designed.

Also, feats from Essentials were obviously better than pre-Essentials feats (even to someone not trying to powergame). In a small handful of areas, that was needed. In many, I don't believe it was.

Eh, some of them are clearly better. What they are really is just CLEAR, you take this one feat, it gets you what you need to do X. Whereas the classic 4e feat chains got kind of messy and some things were not super clear how they should work. Also E-feats are just less "this is just mandatory", like when you take an Essentials Expertise feat, it gives you specific interesting situational bonuses and covers the basic Weapon Expertise feat bonus too, so you can skip that. This is just an improvement in 'Quality of Life' for 4e players, basically. The 'Disciple of' E-feats likewise replace the older Divinity Feats with a simpler and more useful alternative (though in this case they're not a straight mechanical equivalent). The E-Feat list is also a lot more carefully curated. Honestly it was one of the best parts of the design of the supplement and I hand it to them, it worked! You could use this as an additional set of feats with the existing stuff, or it could stand on its own as a fairly comprehensive short feat list, to which you could then add some of the more specialized classic feats if you needed them.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

What were the rules updates in essentials? I don't recall those.

The closest I can think of are the sample improvisations for skills in the essentials books and arcana being able to be used to interact and affect magical phenomena.

There are some moderately technical changes having to do with timing of use of Free Action and some stuff like that. Certain things were slightly redefined, but unless you are a real 4e rules lawyer it hardly matters. Flying and mounts were also slightly updated and simplified. Overall it really isn't much. These changes are in the same sort of realm as errata updates WotC often did anyway.

Oh, and Skill Challenges got a slightly clearer set of rules for advantages and such. Technically those are 'changes', but they don't really invalidate any existing material, just give a few minor additional options in play.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I also recall changes to how magic items and their rarity worked, for example.

And Neonchameleon mentioned above that "damage reduction and spell resistance and spell immunity also got changed, resulting in pretty much the entire Conjuration school now not caring about either spell resistance or spell immunity."

I think the later is in reference to 3e to 3.5. Rarity and how magic item charges work did change between Essentials and classic 4e, but I believe those rules were already an errata. They never did really clarify which magic items have which rarity, so that part was a bit bodgy.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, that's the thing. I also love and lean into B/X D&D, where martial types and even Clerics tend to be spammable "I hit it with my sword" all day, every day. Especially if you're playing Theater of the Mind. Now, with the Knight, the Slayer, the Cavalier, the stances and and Defender Auras do add a tactical element that wasn't there before. Explicit positioning and maneuver become part of the equation, and thinking ahead to how the triggering of those auras or the effects of the stances will have an effect on the battlefield is more interesting than it looks. Do I feel confident that I can hit the target? I'll go with a damage enhancing stance. Do I feel I'll have trouble hitting the target? Go with an attack roll enhancement. Can I move in such a way to force enemies into my Defender Aura and dare them to try to hit my allies?

There's more to those classes than just spamming Melee Basic, at least that's been my experience.

I never saw the point of the stance-based approach, you STILL have to choose a stance every round, it is no less significant than choosing an at-will for a standard 4e fighter. The difference is you have lost a TON of fun options for encounter powers and replaced it with a very boring "hit it harder." The whole image of the 4e fighter as a sort of super hero with all this tactical flexibility evaporated. The Knight and Slayer are definitely the low point of Essentials in my book! Beyond that they're pretty gimpy at higher levels, though I think that was kind of intended. The Thief is pretty crappy as well compared to classic 4e Rogues. Honestly I didn't find much that was an improvement myself... I don't hate Essentials, but I thought it was rather an expenditure of resources that could have gone to more interesting projects.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I never saw the point of the stance-based approach, you STILL have to choose a stance every round,

No you don't. You just leave the character in one stance and call it a day. Or you choose at the start of the turn, not having enough choices to lead to the confusion threshold.

it is no less significant than choosing an at-will for a standard 4e fighter.

But you aren't choosing between two at wills; you're choosing between two at wills and maybe three encounters and three dailies in one fell swoop. Because you're doing so at the point where you attack.

The difference is you have lost a TON of fun options for encounter powers and replaced it with a very boring "hit it harder."

And some people want to hit harder. I consider the 4e fighter one of the best classes in any D&D but different people have different tastes - and pre-essentials 4e caters pretty much exclusively to those who like 4e fighters.

The Thief is pretty crappy as well compared to classic 4e Rogues.

The thief is surprisingly good and flexible. It doesn't scale to epic (not enough off-turn attacks) but can be utter mayhem as long as you don't pick Tactical Trick, which makes it basically a 5e rogue.

 

[Voadam]

In my opinion the Essentials knight defender aura as an aura 1 is superior to the base 4e fighter combat challenge marking one opponent you attack. Much less fiddly with tracking the mark, just being in position on the map activates it.

I would have preferred the essentials get more at wills to choose from though in a round. Flexibility at the at will power level would be great for my tastes.

 

[Neonchameleon]

In my opinion the Essentials knight defender aura as an aura 1 is superior to the base 4e fighter combat challenge marking one opponent you attack. Much less fiddly with tracking the mark, just being in position on the map activates it.

I would have preferred the essentials get more at wills to choose from though in a round. Flexibility at the at will power level would be great for my tastes.

This brings back fond memories of my berserker barbarian (Heroes of the Feywild). A defender aura plus punish which he lost when he went into a rage and did more damage. Also he was an unarmoured barbarian (I'm glad 5e kept that) who carried a staff-like greatspear and wore wizard's robes, and was trained in arcana. A couple of enemies were briefly surprised that their "gank the wizard" plan failed...

Also there's a reason my 4e retroclone has defender auras and no marks. (The default barbarian deliberately has an aura but no punish).

 

[Voadam]

This brings back fond memories of my berserker barbarian (Heroes of the Feywild). A defender aura plus punish which he lost when he went into a rage and did more damage. Also he was an unarmoured barbarian (I'm glad 5e kept that) who carried a staff-like greatspear and wore wizard's robes, and was trained in arcana. A couple of enemies were briefly surprised that their "gank the wizard" plan failed...

Also there's a reason my 4e retroclone has defender auras and no marks. (The default barbarian deliberately has an aura but no punish).

My first 4e campaign I joined I was playing a ranger using the multiclass feats to head towards paragon wizard.

It was great after joining the party and being all about the arcana and magical and political analysis, then getting into a fight where I got jumped and beating up people with my dual striking staff and ranger interrupts when they attacked. The fighter's comment, "I thought you were a wizard . . . ."

 

[Argyle King]

Eh, some of them are clearly better. What they are really is just CLEAR, you take this one feat, it gets you what you need to do X. Whereas the classic 4e feat chains got kind of messy and some things were not super clear how they should work. Also E-feats are just less "this is just mandatory", like when you take an Essentials Expertise feat, it gives you specific interesting situational bonuses and covers the basic Weapon Expertise feat bonus too, so you can skip that. This is just an improvement in 'Quality of Life' for 4e players, basically. The 'Disciple of' E-feats likewise replace the older Divinity Feats with a simpler and more useful alternative (though in this case they're not a straight mechanical equivalent). The E-Feat list is also a lot more carefully curated. Honestly it was one of the best parts of the design of the supplement and I hand it to them, it worked! You could use this as an additional set of feats with the existing stuff, or it could stand on its own as a fairly comprehensive short feat list, to which you could then add some of the more specialized classic feats if you needed them.

For me, a +1 all the time versus a +1 in specific situations is an obvious increase in power. Essentials frequently included feats like the former, and I believe that made them obviously better choices over comparable feats. To me, it created more feats that felt as though "this is mandatory."

I don't remember the Disciple feats, so I don't remember what they did. I'm guessing that they altered Channel Divinity.

I certainly agree that there needed to be improvements on how things like Weapon Expertise were handled. Though, I'm not fully convinced that later 4E or 4E.e were moving in the best direction for addressing the need for those improvements.

4E improved monster math but then also handed a big jump in power creep to PCs, so I'm not sure that the improved monsters made much difference in the end.

I remember a lot of fights in which PCs could hit with single-digit rolls; simultaneously, monsters needed to consistently roll high to even hit NADs (non-AC defenses). That contributed heavily to the feeling of 4E fights dragging at higher levels.