D&D 4E New 4E DM asks about essentials

[wlmartin]

After a few adventures in the world of pathfinder and non mainstream rpg I wanted to look back at the great game which D&D was once again. My first encounter with the 4E was very brutal and unforgiving as the WOTC Scales of war campaign produced an easy TPK in the 3rd ecnounter of the adventure and left the players and myself asking why does this things work the way they work, like the daily powers for people using martial abilities. If curiosity killed the cat this would be my 2nd life. An internet reviewer hooked me on the essential thing about class changes and I ordered a couple of essential books and started to look form more essential like items like the assasin (wchich in my opinion is the most loyal version of the assasin since ad&d).

This is where the problem started. Each review that I found criticised Essentials for various reasons and labeled books as essential type books and traditional 4E type books.

Please explain to me the difference between those two takes on D&D and if you can point out some books or magazines where I can find more essential goodies. Thank you.

In my opinion (which is worth less than many others who will post since I have avoided essentials like the plague until recently deciding to do some solid research on it) the following seems accurate

Essentials is not a different rule system that 4e, it instead does the following

1 : The essentials books explain the rules of D&D in a different way than the corebooks. I think they overexplain things a little but I believe they do this to appeal to the non-hardcore player and to those who have never played D&D before it explains the rules in a way that make more sense
2 : The essentials classes are designed to allow you to start playing the game quickly without such a steep learning curve

No matter if you choose to pickup an essentials book or essentials class, or one from the 4e corebooks - the game is 100% identical, same d20 system, same overall rules etc.

The explanation given by WotC to explain the difference between the 2 is as follows

If the D&D 4e system pre-essentials was the Highway, Essentials is the onramp. It doesnt give you any different instructions to play the game, just gives you a more dumbed down explanation of them.


No matter which book you pick up, you will still be playing the same game.

If you go and buy the PHB, read it through a few times and understand it quite well, Essentials is not needed... you are fine

If you do as I suggest above but the PHB may as well be written in chinese for the sense it is making, Essentials may be a good idea for you.

There is no shame in accepting that you can't grasp the rules as well as some may, after all D&D is a game that people are still learning different ways how to play after 30 years of experience!!