D&D 4E What was the big difference between 4e and "essentials"?

[Garthanos]

I've been trying to be upfront about my lack of experience and non hostile. I ask because I want to know. Of course, when someone starts saying things that are nonsense, then being perfectly civil is more challenging - I'm only human :/

Not meaning to accuse you.

And not your fault exactly ... though you might have found your audience included more 4e familiar people and less ummm whatever... if you specifically categorize using the prefix as being about 4e. It's something you can do by editing the original post and using the drop down at the top, or your can specify it when you make the post in the first place.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Of course this design would make encounter building easier (and also would require a rethink of the "short rest vs long rest classes" balance of 5e (which is a pet peeve of mine). So it looks like a huge plus.

4e parties, overall, have less of their offense tied up in the casters' daily spells, since those are so overwhelmingly important in other editions, its easy to say that 4e is an encounter-based game, when, really, it's just less pacing-dependent.

On the other hand, it makes smaller fights, random encounters etc less meaningful because if you easily defeat the 7 goblins but had to use 3 spells and lost 20 hp... well there was a cost to that little fight, it had meaning, it impact the rest of your day.

OTOH, 4e hp/healing resources are almost entirely daily. So there is an upper limit to PC endurance. Its, like, north of 8 encounters even at low level, but its a consideration, and you have to work together to make sure no one character runs out of surges too early (or really protect him if he does).

Do these little fights have value? Maybe?

They have whatever narrative value they're included for, and they inflict some damage, even if it's not much, that adds up to surges...

So it's not critical to pressure the party with n throwaway encounters to try to make the important ones challenging and the at-will-only classes relevant.
But you can give the party a time-pressured scenario when it fits the story or circumstances, an it'll matter.

Edit: Oh, another use for really trivial encounters that wouldn't be legitimately worth exp on their own is as part of a skill challenge. Instead of simply narrating a consequence of a failure, or deducting a surge, or whatever, each of the first 2 failures of an exploration SC can result in a minor encounter.

Essentials, to circle back to the topic, slightly weakened those advantages, it added back daily-less classes that were dependent on longer days ro balance vs others, it even added back a little 3e type surge-independent healing. Nothing like the degree to which 5e leans on pacing to balance both classes and encounters, but headed that way.