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Message: <blockquote data-quote="giant.robot" data-source="post: 5291168" data-attributes="member: 93119">For starters it is possible and supported by WotC to completely ignore the Essentials products. They're not going to stop printing any of the Core books. You'll still be able to run a game free of any Essentials rules. The fact that the new rules work with all the products previously published should tell you that essentials is not a new edition of the game. I'm going to get a copy of the Rules Compendium to keep at the game table because it will be a condensed and more portable version of all the rules everyone is already playing with.Even if you incorporate the Essentials rules/builds/powers into an existing game very little if anything will break. You get some more options but nothing will really break. The WotC people have been pretty adamant that you don't need to throw out existing characters and games to use material from Essentials products. Items getting new classifications and Wizard encounter powers getting miss effects don't really break any existing games. The certainly don't break games more than any other errata. Magic Missile auto-hitting for 2+Int modifier damage is not a game breaking change. If you house rule MM to use the old rules nothing at all will break. Nothing will break if you use the old MM rules in an Essentials-only game. The 4E game was designed from the outset to evolve over time. Thankfully WotC hasn't broken existing content with their new rules or builds. This is precisely what happened with 3.5E and why people were so wary with 4E. Essentials does not invalidate old material but instead just adds to it. With 3.5E your old 3E books were no longer actually valid (especially the MMs) and you had to do a lot of converting if you weren't interested in buying all new copies of books. I would only agree with the assertion that Essentials is a 4.5E if my existing books I own today weren't useful to me anymore. I've got damn near every 4E book published and I would be apoplectic if WotC repeated their 3.5E shenanigans. Nothing at all about essentials looks like they're doing this and actually looking at the 4E system I think it's obvious they designed it so they wouldn't ever have to do a "4.5E" re-release.</blockquote>

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