Confusion over Class Compendium, Essentials, and Splat Books

[caudor]

I'm confused about the D&D landscape now days, but hopefully someone has a better handle on what is going on.

Lately, WotC has been releasing these Class Compendium articles that take a class from the 4e PHB and updates it. But what is the purpose of these updates? Are they to simply add errata and align rules with Essentials? Or is it these classes are not same class anymore. Do the new class builds replace the original ones?

And then to add to the confusion, I'm not sure how this impacts my splat books (ie. Divine Power). Let's say I roll a new Templar. If I start using powers and feats from older sources, does this defeat the purpose of the new CC classes in the first place?

Back when 3.0 went to 3.5, at least I knew where the lines were. Now, I'm not sure what material really is obsolete, what is OK, and what stuff is considered 'current'.

So basically it boils down to: If I want to play the most current version of the game, with errata, what past sourcebooks should I leave on the shelf.

Thanks for your help

 

[Incenjucar]

PHB1 material, aside from that which has been altered through errata, is still just as usable as stuff that is hot off the press. Some of the new stuff is unquestionably better than the old stuff, however.

 

[OnlineDM]

The Class Compendium articles are reprints of the PHB1 classes with rules updates ("errata") and new formatting. This means that the classes have new sub-class names (the old Fighter is now the Weaponmaster, the old Cleric is now the Templar, and so on). It also means that anything that had been edited about the class or its powers over the past couple of years will be incorporated in the new write-up.

In addition, they've introduced some new rules updates with the Class Compendium articles. The power-level changes to several of the Templar powers received a lot of attention, for instance. These are new rules updates that weren't previously published.

If you are a hard-copy kind of person, you'll probably prefer printing out the Class Compendium articles and using those instead of the PHB1 for the classes that have been updated.

As for the splat books, the Class Compendium articles don't affect those in any way that I know of. I'm sure there have been rules updates to some of the powers and feats printed in those books over the years, but I don't know if any of that is in the Class Compendium articles.

Personally, I use the Character Builder, so it doesn't make much difference to me one way or the other. But I understand your question about the physical books.

 

[caudor]

Thank you! This is very helpful.

I think I read in one of the rule-of-three articles that the designers believe the PHB3 classes are just fine like they are (hence no CC update coming for them).

I wonder if the Bard will get a Class Compendium reprint? At this point, it seems that only PHB1 classes are getting CC articles.

Anyway, thanks again. I'm not feeling lost at sea anymore

 

[WalterKovacs]

Thank you! This is very helpful.

I think I read in one of the rule-of-three articles that the designers believe the PHB3 classes are just fine like they are (hence no CC update coming for them).

I wonder if the Bard will get a Class Compendium reprint? At this point, it seems that only PHB1 classes are getting CC articles.

Anyway, thanks again. I'm not feeling lost at sea anymore

For the most part, they figured a lot out after publishing PHB1, and quickly started to change their approach. After PHB1, all new classes had a single attack stat and a choice of secondary stats based on the build choice. So, the initial book was much different than later ones. Also, part of the reason for the Class Compendium Articles is that they've released some feats to allow for mixing Essential class options with PHB1 class options, and this allows players new to the game via Essentials to get their hands on the PHB content without having to find a copy of the old book (which was already heavily errata'd even before these further updates.)