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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Windjammer" data-source="post: 5353513" data-attributes="member: 60075">Maggan,  You’re of course correct to point out that some of the Essentials products sold separately, namely tiles and dice, would have to be bought by a Core customer too when starting out. Essentials is better in one regard, for including tokens straight away in all of the boxes. (It may help to remember, though, that the 2008 Starter Box contained: dice, tokens, and dungeon tiles. New Red Box doesn’t contain tiles but a fold out dungeon mat. There’s suggestions on how to use the mat to customize it, but in essence you’d have to cut it in 4 bits which I’m sure a lot of people would be hesitant.)  However, I’m a bit skeptical about the way Essentials divides up content beyond Starters.  1.   For one, material on classes that was previously in one book (PHB 1) is split in two. Of course, the second of the two “Heroes” books contains some racial write ups not in PHB 1 (like drow), but on the whole, it’s really that PHB 1 gave you 8 classes with 2 builds each, whereas in Essentials you now need to buy two separate books, and not even then would you get 2 builds per class purchased (I think there’s only 1 rogue build in the first Heroes book).  That’s just bean counting. What it boils down to – has it made it easier for new players to have the classes in one neat spot? No, of course not. You trade that for having a cheaper entrance point, not for having the same material collected conveniently.   2.  My second point regards the distribution of rules themselves. To be honest, I never liked the way both D&D 3.5 and 4.0 divided up rules on combat between the PHB and the DMG. Combat is pretty essential to these games, so why separate them into separate products? Made no sense. Enter Essentials. I have far from a complete picture of the new rules distribution, but the following seems to be the case. First, rules for char-gen have been split off from the other rules. In PHB 1 you had both, in Essentials you got to buy two books. Is that handy? Further, instead of WotC saying, yep, here’s two separate Rules references, one for char gen and one for everything else, they didn’t even do that! They again went for subdividing the remainder of the rules between the DM Book in the DM Kit, and the Rules Compendium.   So, to cut a long story short, we now have three books – Heroes of FL, Rules Compendium, DM Kit – which between them contain quite a bit replication (each contains “How to Read a Power”, the latter two overlap more substantially), and then do not even contain everything. Monster Rules? Check Monster Vault. Equipment? Not there yet. Rituals? Not there yet either.  Sorry, what’s that? I had hoped for the days being gone when I’d have to lump the PHB 1, the DMG 1, and Adventurer’s  Vault 1 to the table to get – what I take to be the Essential ingredients to D&D 4E – everything I need at my finger tips. Essentials promised to simplify that situation, and in particular, promised to give us “all the rules we ever need” into one handy Compendium. That did not happen.</blockquote>

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