D&D 4E 4e core or essential?

[S'mon]

It would do you more credit if you considered the sum total of someones work before drawing a conclusion, rather than jumping to a conclusion on the basis of a single statement.

Your gaming experience will be poorer if you rule out the posts of S'mon without further consideration, he's said a lot of good stuff.

Furthermore, the 'WTF' is pretty rude, so I'd avoid that in the future if I were you.

Thanks

Hey, I was looking forward to seeing some red text there!

Seriously, thanks PS.

 

[doctorhook]

Let me add to the choir of folks recommending Essentials, especially Heroes of the Fallen Lands. That book manages to be solidly designed, easy to understand, and highly evocative all at the same time. I think it captures "old-school" flavour much better than the PHB does, too.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I am going to be teaching some people how to play D&D in a few weeks and they want to try 4e instead of trying to find some 3e books etc. Now my question is... I have the 4e DM's Guide but I was wondering if it would be better to pick up essentials vs. the other two core rules for 4e.

To get the same range of options for yourself and your players as you would getting the PH & MM, you'd want to pick up HotFL, HotFK, and Monster Vault. So you're looking at comparable cost, either way. Actually, the best deal would probably be PH and Monster Vault, you spend 55 instead of 60 or 70, your players get good class options and you get kick-ass monsters.

Is it easier to learn and teach from Essentials or about the same using the core books? What are the differences? What are the options pros and cons?

It depends on what you're trying to learn & teach. If you're trying to teach completely new players all the ins & outs of 4e, so they can eventually use the full spectrum of material out for it, starting with the Core books would give them a better persepective on how the system as a whole works. If you want to make it as easy as possible to hit the ground running, Essentials gives a simpler first experience, but has a less internally consistent scheme for class design and advancement. A player who starts with an Essentials Warpriest or Mage won't have much trouble understanding how to play a 4e character of any class. One that starts with a Slayer, Knight or Theif will have to re-learn how classes work to handle other 4e classes. Going the other way isn't even much of a problem: if you start with a 4e Fighter, you'll be able to handle a Knight or Slayer, no problem... even if you may find it a tad boring.

So, for a casual game that you don't expect to last too long: Essentials.

For something you hope grows into a long-running campaign and a serious hobby for those you're introducing: Core 4e.

Finally, if the players you're introducing are not genuinely new, but rather just haven't played D&D in a long time - since the 90s or even 80s - then Essentials has another advantage, in that it's wrapped in a coating of nostalgia. It's little things, like the cover design of the Red Box, the names of some classes and features, and the way the classes vary in complexity and situational effectiveness. Old-school players coming back to D&D expect the fighter to be big and dumb, and the magic-user to start out weak and become godlike. 4e is paradigm-shattering for them. Essentials lets them down easy.

 

[S'mon]

So, for a casual game that you don't expect to last too long: Essentials.

For something you hope grows into a long-running campaign and a serious hobby for those you're introducing: Core 4e.

This only makes sense if you expect players to plough through a large number of PCs, of different classes, in the course of the long-running campaign.

I'm playing an Essentials Thief. If I had to switch to another class, sure I might have more to learn than if I were playing a PHB Rogue. But as long as I still have my Thief PC I don't see why I shouldn't be fine for a long-term campaign. And if he died I'd probably go for another simple Striker class like Slayer or Ranger, anyway.

 

[Incenjucar]

Start with Essentials simply because it has a very blunt presentation, but make sure that they are AWARE of the pre-E material so that they don't get the impression that mages are the only class with lots and lots of options.

 

[S'mon]

Here's a flaw I've just identified in Heroes of the Fallen Lands, about an hour ago. Remember this is my first time making a PC without the downloadable character builder, although I've GM'd 4e since 2009.

I've spent the last 2 weeks, since I started playing 4e again, under the mistaken impression that PCs get a Feat every 4 levels - I think because 4th is when you get ability bonuses. I checked this morning - "Feat" is not even in the near-useless glossary. The indexed references do NOT say how often you actually get Feats. I check the level benefits table for Thief - no mention of Feats! At that point my heart is sinking. Eventually I tracked down a mention in the text on page 172 - "at every even numbered level". Yaay! But it would really have helped for WotC to have put "gain a feat" at levels 2, 4, 6, 8 etc on the Class Features & Powers table, for Thief it's on page 174.

Edit: Checked the table again. NOW I see there is a "Feats Known" column which says "+1" at the appropriate levels. My eyes glided right over that the first time.

 

[airwalkrr]

Maybe I'm alone here, but I don't really think it matters. My wife was able to create a 4th edition character in about 15 minutes without really knowing anything about the system, although she has played 3rd edition. 4th edition is incredibly easy to use to introduce new players to RPGs. If you are starting at 1st level and just using one book for players there are very few decisions to make either way you go.

 

[Saracenus]

Long time DM/player (1979 was my inception date).

I had to take a short break last year from gaming and recently came back to play some D&D Encounters which uses Essentials only for player sources (both Heroes of the FL/FK and Selected Dragon content).

I have to say, I love Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms... I have been playing an Elf Sentinel Druid of Spring along side my wife's Elf Hunter Ranger and we have been having a blast.

They are not as complex as my Living Forgotten Realms PCs (Valorous Bard, Storm Sorcerer, and Nightstalker Assassin) but incredibly easy to play.

Granted both the Sentinel and the Hunter are a bit more complex than the Slayer and Thief in Heroes of the Fallen Lands my wife was able to put a PC together in less than a half hour.

Don't get me wrong, I love tuning up a build and seeing my options. But for taking someone from 0 to Fun in a very short time while making build and play options manageable, Essentials cannot be beat.

If you need some pre-gen PCs already built for your game, WotC has some here:

Season 4 DDE Pre-Gens (1st level):
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/rpga/downloads/DnD_Encounters_2011_Characters.zip

Season 3 DDE Pre-Gens (1st level):
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/EssentialsCharacterSheets_All_lowres.pdf

Red Box Game Day PCs (2nd level):
http://www.wizards.com/rpga/downloads/Red_Box_Game_Day_Chars.zip
with that Goldenrod PC character sheet feel...

Hope this helps

 

[KarinsDad]

But finding their character to be ... ineffective will be a problem.

Huh?

4E PCs are ineffective?


Personally, I think that either edition would work fine. It also depends on whether the DM is going to create pre-gen PCs, or if his players want to create their own.

Everyone keeps saying how easy Essentials PCs are, but if someone actually goes in a reads all of the writeup for the first level Thief in HotFL and compares it to the number of pages of a first level Rogue in the PHB (3 pages), the Thief writeup is not smaller (the pages are smaller, but there are more of them).

There's still a lot of material there to read and absorb.

 

[DEFCON 1]

There's still a lot of material there to read and absorb.

You're exactly right. If you as DM were to hand a pre-genned character sheet to a new player, they might have an easier time understanding the Essentials pre-genned sheet because there are less fiddly concepts needed to grasp... but actually creating that character involves just as much reading and understanding the rules of the game as a classic rogue does.

But in both cases, Classic and Essentials... if you have a DM who understands the game and knows the rules and definitions and can point things out to the player as you play... either the rogue or the thief are fairly easy to grok after a combat or two. The game isn't that hard when you have someone teaching you how to play, unless you just can't grasp game rules in general very well.