D&D 4E Inquiry: How do 4E fans feel about 4E Essentials?

Charlaquin · Oct 20, 2021

Dausuul said:
It wasn't in the books, but they released a "Marshal" class in Dragon that was an Essentialized warlord. Or at least a warlord in Essentials format; mechanically it apparently wasn't much different from the PHB version. (I don't remember the details, and the original article has departed WotC's website, so I'm going off commentary on the article from third-party sources.)

Oh, that’s right! I had forgotten about that.

EDIT: It was in Dragon 397. But, I don’t think it’s actually different than the PHB warlord. It’s just formatted like Essentials classes were.

Minigiant · Oct 20, 2021

Charlaquin said:
I think this was mostly a marketing fail. While Essentials played great standalone, it also played great alongside the rest of 4e. But the marketing couldn’t decide if it was a beginner’s set, or an add-on to 4e, or a 4.5e, or “fixing” 4e, or what.

That was my main gripe with it. And that indecision breed to the mechanics and class layout as well.

doctorbadwolf · Oct 21, 2021

Campbell said:
In general prior to Essentials as a 4e GM I did not have to pay attention to things like the length of the adventuring day if I wanted the game to be balanced. I just basically run it however I wanted. The Essentials classes changed all that.

Do you recall what about the essentials classes changed that for you? I ask because they certainly didn't for me, in spite of the theorycrafting at the time that insisted the whole game was broken now.

Campbell said:
Even more importantly for me I really appreciated the 4e lore and Essentials walked back pretty much all of the conflict rich 4e specific lore for a more conflict neutral approach to the lore that was more reminiscent of previous editions.

I don't remember this happening. Was it in magazine articles, or the Essentials books themselves?

cbwjm said:
Essentials came to late for me to use but I think if they had started with the essentials class structure that 4e would have been better recieved.

I agree. I think it also would have just run better and been more smooth, with stuff like feats to make your basic attacks use your primary class ability not being needed, and tons of other fiddly bits that could have been avoided.

Charlaquin said:
I don’t remember there being an Essentials-style warlord. There was an assassin, called the executioner, which was a little bit weak, but incredibly fun.

It really was both of those things lol

I did find that if you used shrouds instead of the normal executioner thing, and basically just folded most of the "make shrouds work" feats into the class feature, executioner managed to not be weak compared to anything but the most optimized strikers.

Dausuul said:
It wasn't in the books, but they released a "Marshal" class in Dragon that was an Essentialized warlord. Or at least a warlord in Essentials format; mechanically it apparently wasn't much different from the PHB version. (I don't remember the details, and the original article has departed WotC's website, so I'm going off commentary on the article from third-party sources.)

Yeah I recall that. It was odd, because it was just the same class presented in E format, which seemed like a wasted opportunity. Then again, they wasted a lot of opportunities, like fixing their only digital only class (assassin) with significant errata, instead of adding more and more feat taxes to it.

Charlaquin · Oct 21, 2021

doctorbadwolf said:
I did find that if you used shrouds instead of the normal executioner thing, and basically just folded most of the "make shrouds work" feats into the class feature, executioner managed to not be weak compared to anything but the most optimized strikers.

What the executioner lacked in actual combat effectiveness it made up for in sheer style. Even though your damage output was overall kinda low, it just felt cool throwing a bucketload of damage dice once per encounter, or garrotting people to death when you occasionally got the chance.

(Psi)SeveredHead · Oct 21, 2021

Charlaquin said:
What the executioner lacked in actual combat effectiveness it made up for in sheer style. Even though your damage output was overall kinda low, it just felt cool throwing a bucketload of damage dice once per encounter, or garrotting people to death when you occasionally got the chance.

That reminds me of when I saw a monk for the first time. We were TPK'd without even making an attack roll (converted 1e adventure) but the monk was basically bouncing all over the place like they were doing wire-fu. It was awesome!

iserith · Oct 21, 2021

I honestly didn't make any real distinction between Essentials and everything else when I was playing. If you were using the online character builder, it was just another set of options to choose from in my view. So in the various games I ran, there was some Essentials characters and some others. I never really noticed anything all that different that impacted the game.

Vaalingrade · Oct 21, 2021

Randomthoughts said:
I recall back in the day how some folks saw Essentials as a betrayal of 4e's original design.

That'd be me. I did and do see it as a desperate attempt to break the back of the good game design to try and win back the people who abandoned the game years earlier.

Especially with the 'We've finally got a boring Fighter' class, Slayer.

AtomicPope · Oct 21, 2021

FitzTheRuke said:
Retailer here. The trouble with Essentials is that they tried to do three things at once, which confused the audience:

1) It's main reason for existing (and the name) was because they were trying to create a product that could be stocked and ordered by stores that didn't understand D&D. They wanted to branch out from our FLGSs to Target, Walmart, etc. where they needed the staff to understand what they needed to have in-store in order to stock "Dungeons and Dragons". Hence, "D&D Essentials" (This is also why they made it cheaper softcovers and box-sets).

Smaller books, soft covers, streamlined rules/classes, that makes perfect sense. I'm guessing that's what they were doing with the new edition of Gamma World too. The books were the same size and material. Not to mention, the system was limited to 10 levels and each level was packed with goodies.

Back to topic, I loved the Essentials monsters because the math was better. The players were divided as the classes offered more interest to some than others, and that was a matter of taste and style more than substance. From a 4e fan perspective, I always viewed Essentials as Unnecessary. We were all experienced gamers (Twightlight 2000, Palladium, Classic Gamma World) so the system crunch didn't really bog us down. At our table, Essentials was like Unearthed Arcana coming to AD&D: kewl stuff and ideas to sift through.

Charlaquin · Oct 21, 2021

Vaalingrade said:
That'd be me. I did and do see it as a desperate attempt to break the back of the good game design to try and win back the people who abandoned the game years earlier.

Especially with the 'We've finally got a boring Fighter' class, Slayer.

I certainly think “win back the people who hopped over to Pathfinder” was part of the motivation. But a lot of folks who stuck with 4e the whole time really enjoyed Essentials. Was it as balanced as earlier 4e? No. Did it make improvements in other ways? I think so. And again, you could use both together (unless you were playing in D&D Encounters, I guess?)

I think it was a solid evolution of 4e design, though it did make some missteps. I would really like to see what 5e would have looked like in the alternate timeline where Essentials was a success.

FitzTheRuke · Oct 21, 2021

Undrave said:
I think they've done that better with the box sets this edition.

Absolutely! The Starter and (ahem) Essentials box sets from 5e are both very excellent products, both from a sales perspective (appropriate for what they are and who they are for) AND from a gamer's perspective (useful, well-done, interesting stuff).