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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 6273103" data-attributes="member: 5143">There were a lot of rules changes between 3.0 and 3.5 edition.  Movement changed(what happened when you moved on angles), the rules for shooting through cover, damage reduction, skills changed, and countless other rules changed.  Not to mention the effect of a number of spells changed.  The 3.5e rules were meant to be a complete replacement of the old rules.  The new versions of all the classes were meant to replace.  One could say that it was just a bunch of errata on the old edition, but there was so much errata that it took 40 pages just to explain all the changes.  Even then there were things missing from that list.There were zero rules changes between 4e and Essentials.  So there was 100% compatibility between Essentials and 4e.  I added them to my game with 0 disruption.  Well, I supposed there was one SMALL disruption.  A couple feats in the Essentials books were clearly better than the ones in the previous books and a number of people felt cheated so I let them swap their feats for the new ones and we continued onward.  This same thing happened with a couple other splat books, however.I ran Encounters at that time, I didn't see that the game was adjudicated any differently.  It played a little different.  As is likely when nearly everyone at the table was suddenly playing classes that worked quite a bit differently from the older classes.  A lot of people were thrown off by "What?  I don't have Dailies?  BUT EVERYONE HAS DAILIES!!!  What's with all the changes?"Though the actual game played the same, I rolled initiative the same, we went around in the same order, people decided to use their standard, move, and minor actions in the same way, we rolled for damage the same way, we rolled skills the same way, the monsters they fought were the same, the players used the exact same character sheets.I did mix the two.  I originally restricted people to only Essentials classes since I was tired of all the power gaming going on at my table and felt the new classes simplified the game a lot and prevented a lot of abuse.  We played like that for a while until a bunch of my more powergaming minded friends started complaining constantly that they felt way too limited and couldn't play the game properly without the choice of every power, feat, and class from every book.  I eventually relented and allowed everything.There were no mechanical issues at all.  There was no change in DMing style or anything I needed to do to combine them.  I just started allowing everything again.  A bunch of players decided to keep their Essentials characters and a large amount of the time they were doing slightly better damage than the non-Essential characters due to their lack of dailies and more powerful class features.  However, everything seemed pretty balanced and although the Essentials characters had a different "feel" to them, they certainly weren't playing an entirely different game.It didn't do away with it, it was just another PHB.  If they published a book containing all of the 3.5e rules but instead compiled all the classes from all the splat books and released it, it would still be 3.5e even though it contained all the rules for the game and meant you didn't need the original PHB at all anymore.  It would just be weird because now everyone playing would be Spellthieves, Scouts, Marshals, and Crusaders.  All of which would have a different feel to the classes in the PHB and might feel like a different game but the rules those characters play under would be exactly the same.  If they took a spell, it was exactly the same as the old PHB, if they took a feat it was exactly the same as the old PHB.Essentials was definitely a step forward for 4e in terms of trying new things out.  But it was not a new edition.</blockquote>

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