D&D 5E Essentials: More like 3.9e than 4.5e (link inside)

[BryonD]

Absolutely. But I didn't want to get into all of that.

Agreed. But I also don't want to act interested and then suddenly say I'm not convinced either.

I am very interested and see nothing but positive in what I have read. I'm not trying to be subversive.

But that doesn't mean this is going to be enough. I'll continue to watch with an open and optimistic mind.

 

[amerigoV]

More importantly, it will hopefully also appeal to non-adopters.

Well, I'll speak as a non-adopter.

1) I am not a 4e hater, just not an adopter. I'll play it, but D&D (any edition) is not my system of choice anymore.

2) I found 3.x to be a vast improvement over older editions. It has it flaws, but all systems do.

3) I found 4e to be both good and different. However, I did not find the system in totality the improvement jump that I saw in 3.x over 1e (I did not play much 2e - I thought the kits were unbalanced to the core and just wandered off after that).

4) So for me, 4e is like a new version of Microsoft Office. It is not something I will run out and "have to get". But if it comes with the machine, I'll use it (ie, if I join a group that uses 4e, I'll gladly play). The new features will be nice and I will probably grumble at the old stuff that worked that they redesigned. But I'll get along.

Given the above, I just do not see how buying "yet another fighter" will attract non-adopters to the fold. Going through the churn of 3->3.5->4->4Essentials with only marginal improvements is rather annoying (I'm not talking change, I'm talking overall improvements). I GM a lot, so I am on the hook for a decent chunk of change - if I am going to shell out the $, I want the value.

Now, will Essentials help get new people in the fold? I hope so. D&D is the Brand that gets most people into roleplaying. So regardless of if I am on the 4e/4Essential bandwagon personally, I want D&D to succeed to keep the influx of people into the hobby.

 

[I'm A Banana]

As a current 4e DM and player, the Essentials line for 4e is giving me a little of that rush I felt with the lead up to 3e.

"Why yes, this is one of my problems, and I see here that you have a nice solution all lined up for me! Hooray!"

4.whatever, I don't care what you call it, it is entirely Good News. And I looooooooooooooooooooooourve the idea of making a more domain-centric cleric. It helps guide archetypal choices very well.

I also did a little double-take at the XP chart...

This sounds like it's fixing nearly all of my problems about the current core classes. About the only big change that I could otherwise hope for is a non-grid-based combat system, but I'm not holding my breath for that one.

 

[Dedekind]

Reading the cleric article has made me definitely more interested in Essentials. I particularly like that one can choose to have a class without dailies but with more interesting encounters.

I also see these options as bringing a lot of potential flavor into the game. I never liked specialty priests (from FR 2e) mechanically, but they brought a lot to the roleplaying.

Regarding the edition "change," this really only seems to have an effect if Essentials was not balanced. The general opinion seems to be that the 4e balance was good, so maybe WotC has this under control.

 

[Dedekind]

<Oops, didn't read the original article close enough>

 

[Jack99]

Since when did a band-wagon become a negative thing? It's just a thing, neither negative nor positive.

Really - I am no native speaker, but a quick Google search seems to disagree with you.

Either way - consider Dice's track record of posting against the DDI, I am pretty sure I was right that he meant it as something negative, no matter which meaning you attribute to the phrase.

Cheers

 

[BryonD]

Really - I am no native speaker, but a quick Google search seems to disagree with you.

Either way - consider Dice's track record of posting against the DDI, I am pretty sure I was right that he meant it as something negative, no matter which meaning you attribute to the phrase.

Cheers

Really? My "track record" probably isn't any better, and yet in this context I'm seeing things as having some potential.

I think the question becomes, do the 4E fanboys want to use this opportunity to talk about growth potential or do some of them what to live up to their track record of lashing out first and considering the merit of critical comments never.

So, do we look for ways to improve? Or do we resist change?

 

[Mistwell]

My read of the essentials line is this:

1) We [WOTC] had all this material we were going to put into various Power books, which is now going into the Essentials books. For example we had material for Martial Power 3, which would include a variant fighter that used At-Will/Encounter power-boosting instead of daily powers. We had variants of the other classes as well, intended for other Power books. Now all that goes into the Essentials line instead of new Power books.

2) We have all the errata from before, including some new errata for one line of Wizard spells, that will be included in this.

3) We re-formatted some rules and put in some better descriptions of some stuff, to make it easier for new players to pick this stuff up.

4) We put it all in paperback, so it's less expensive to buy.

None of that screams new edition to me, or new half edition either. All of the material is, from my read of it, stuff that would have ended up in expansion books anyway, and in errata anyway, except for some additional formatting and descriptions. But by packaging it in this different way, they pick up some new players (they hope) while still selling to old players (they hope).

It all also seems 100% compatible with existing 4e (with errata), given any changes to existing characters will be in the errata anyway, and are still relatively minor in their nature.

I suppose you can call try and call this 4.5e simply because of a larger amount of errata, but frankly I didn't think 3.5 was just 3.0e with more errata. Some things simply were not compatible between those two sub-editions, and could not just be fixed with some errata.

And yet, with the Essentials line, it does seem like it all works together, and the amount of errata is manageable and within the same rules sub-systems as opposed to a brand new sub-systems.

For example, adding some "miss" descriptors to some Wizard spells is not a new sub-system or new way of handling the Wizard class or their powers. It's a pretty normal add-on that I can see them doing with errata, and I seriously doubt that errata alone would have triggered anyone claiming it was a new edition.

Heck, it seems like a more minor change than the 3.5 polymorph errata they tried to do. That errata changed entire character concepts, some creature concepts, and a whole slew of stuff that had to be torn down and rebuilt almost from scratch. Maybe people called the polymorph errata a new edition too, but I don't recall that happening much.

Tevor Kidd's EW post seemed pretty telling to me:

And seriously, new builds is what I would liken the crunchy bits in the Essentials players books to. You've got the basic PH1 Fighter, you've got the battlerager, and then you'll have the Essentials fighter build. You have the Bow/Two weapon ranger, you have the beast ranger, and you have the Essentials ranger. The rules for playing the game don't change (beyond adding the rules updates into the compendium), and a party could easily have an Essentials build rogue right along side a Brawny Rogue from PH1 - that is, assuming the party wanted two melee strikers.

And the EW News item from a couple days ago:

"This point bears repeating—Aside from rules updates and changes to one category of wizard spells, the character you are playing today does not change in any major way. It was crucial to us that someone playing a dwarf fighter today didn’t need to rebuild that character once the Essentials products were released."

Now, could you honestly say that last paragraph about the changes between 3.0 and 3.5? I know I couldn't. My half-orc fighter was shredded in the changes to 3.5, and the entire concept had to be scrapped due to the changes. 3.5 seemed to require complete character rebuilds for my entire group. It would seem the Essentials line does not require that sort of change, thus making it not a new edition (or sub-edition or whatever you call adding a .X to the name).

The new Cleric article sheds some more light on the issue:

Compatibility: The Essentials products aren’t a new version of the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game, though they do give us a chance to clean up and clarify a few things that have been causing issues the past two years. In the end, current players had to endure as few changes as possible. The only changes we embraced were ones that we would have implemented even if we were not producing the Essentials products. That’s why things like the new approach to racial stat modifiers appeared in Player’s Handbook 3 and the higher monster damage appeared in Monster Manual 3. Regardless of the directions the Essentials products took, we wanted to implement these new approaches in the game.

Overall, it sure doesn't seem like a new edition to me. Certainly not to the extent that 3.5 was a new edition from 3.0.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Now, could you honestly say that last paragraph about the changes between 3.0 and 3.5? I know I couldn't. My half-orc fighter was shredded in the changes to 3.5, and the entire concept had to be scrapped due to the changes. 3.5 seemed to require complete character rebuilds for my entire group. It would seem the Essentials line does not require that sort of change, thus making it not a new edition (or sub-edition or whatever you call adding a .X to the name).

I think that this is because the class powers in 3.x were from the class abilities granted by the level progression where as in 4.0 they come from the powers which are pretty much exceptions to the basic rules.

So tinkering with classes in 3.x lead to power creep because the original classes had a lot of blank levels for a lot of classes but then prestige classes or even some basic classes came along later with something juicy at every level.

 

[Mark CMG]

Rhetoric aside, there's a chance that once all of this is released in final form, most of the people who use 4E will decide the new material doesn't work for their ongoing campaigns. Some might adopt a bit or piece here or there on the order of houseruling their game. Others might use all of it, essentially changing the face of their campaign or even ending it and beginning a new campaign so as to avoid continuity issues they feel might come up.

We'll know the actuality of the depth and importance of the changes post release and know more fully how much WotC is banking on these releases when they tell the RPGA what is expected of them. It's the one segment of the gaming population that WotC has more control over in regard to what materials are adopted.

For our part, a member of our regular group will be running ToH4E soon and we'll see how the current system handles that classic. After he has the chance to evaluate the Essentials line of revisions, he'll make the call if it is worth adopted them for the next time he runs a 4E foray for our group.