4e has completely fallen of the radar for me. I sort of knew essentials was coming, and i heard about the red box light two week before release(i think) and generally have decided that I wasn't likely to be dealing with 4e any time soon.
Now some of Saturday my gaming group, who played 4e once, for three(?, maybe only two,i struggle to remember) sessions, are talking about doing 4e again. And worse still, they are talking about using essentials....so please, let me know, what is the deal with essentials?
Essentials is a combination of erratta along with new builds for some of the classes. The rules changes are minor, but the new class builds are closer to the classes from older editions. Fighters don't have powers, instead relying on stances and basic attacks. Wizards have more options and have to memorize their encounter powers.
The original classes wrk side by side with Essential characters, so if the new builds don't interest you, you don't have to buy new books. It's also important to note that the Character Builder hasn't been updated with the Essential builds yet, so the Heroes of the Fallen Lands book is the only source for the full build. The new red box, doesn't have full character creation rules; it is geared more towards new players entirely.
Essentials is a combination of erratta along with new builds for some of the classes. The rules changes are minor, but the new class builds are closer to the classes from older editions. Fighters don't have powers, instead relying on stances and basic attacks. Wizards have more options and have to memorize their encounter powers.
The original classes wrk side by side with Essential characters, so if the new builds don't interest you, you don't have to buy new books. It's also important to note that the Character Builder hasn't been updated with the Essential builds yet, so the Heroes of the Fallen Lands book is the only source for the full build. The new red box, doesn't have full character creation rules; it is geared more towards new players entirely.
So how do the changes to the fighter work?
So how do the changes to the fighter work?
Want to know more? Ask your favorite search engine for 'essentials fighter preview'.
So how do the changes to the fighter work?Want to know more? Ask your favorite search engine for 'essentials fighter preview'.
Ah, but with that approach i don't get the opinion as well. I like to here the opinions as well, especially when it comes from voice here which i have come to respect.
One fighter build, the knight, starts with 2 stances and can enter or change a stance as a minor action. Instead of having at-will attack powers, the knight only makes basic attacks and the stances enhance the basic attacks. IMO this is only a cosmetic change because the stances mimic stuff the old fighter was doing with at-wills. Stuff like the old cleave at-will, which did Con modifier damage to an enemy adjacent to the target, is now done by the Cleaving Assault stance, which does Con modifier damage to an enemy adjacent to the target of any enemy you use a basic attack on.
The knight's 1st level encounter power only allows the fighter to add one die of damage to any basic attack.
A lot of 4e's naysayers had huge problems with the fact that the martial classes had what were called powers. Folks that liked 4e accepted that they weren't actually powers in the literal sense, and just powers in name. In Essentials a fighter gains the benefits of calling out old power names, but is just saying "I attack." For some players that hated 4e, that's like a warm blanket.
The designers of Essentials have finally listened to the customers and have heard that players aren't comfortable saying a fighter has powers and called them something else. They've done it with the rogue, cleric, and wizard, making simple cosmetic changes that make the classes seem closer to older editions, but still balanced with the 4e rules. This seems to have had a 2-fold effect. A lot of older edition fans feel like WotC is finally listening, and the classes look like classes they were familiar with.
IMO the wizard and cleric aren't that much different than the standard 4E wizard and cleric. However, the fighter and rogue do look a lot different. However, in some ways if you go with a 4E fighter you are quite limited in choice as to how you put him together. For instance, you can't really build an effective ranged fighter with essentials or a fighter that specializes in two weapon fighting. You pretty much either build a sword and board type fighter or a great weapon fighter. This is where I think many players coming from 3E might still feel frustrated. The standard 4E fighter has a lot more options for different types of builds, especially with the help of books like martial power.
I do like that the Slayer fighter build in the Essentials is a "Striker" instead of a "Defender", so you can now build a martial character that is really good at smacking things for loads of damage, which can be fun if you don't want to deal with the complexities of marking opponents and using Fighter's Challenge. Previously, the best way to build a character like that was using the Barbarian Class, and if you didn't like the feel of being a "Primal" character, you didn't have a lot of other good options for creating such a character.
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Ah, but with that approach i don't get the opinion as well. I like to here the opinions as well, especially when it comes from voice here which i have come to respect.
My group bought the 4e books when it first came out. We played for a couple of months and decided that it just wasn't the type of game we wanted to play. To be honest I didn't even like reading the books. They seemed to bland. So we went back to 3.x and then to Pathfinder.
I don't know if this is helpful to you, but as a devoted Pathfinder/3.x player who did not like 4e as it was originally released, I am pleased with Essentials.The 4e rules are still there, but there are some tweaks and the feeling of the game is a bit different. I like the PC builds in Essentials and to me the fighter builds make more sense than they did in original 4e. It actually seems like a fighter. I guess the best way to describe it is that the classes don't feel so alike in Essentials as they did in original 4e. Some complain that there are too few options, but to me the classes just seem more natural in Essntials. They're not as bland, IMO.
I own the Rules Compendium, the first "Heroes" book and MM3(everyone said it was very Essentials-like) so that I would have monsters for my Essentials game. All of which were actually enjoyable to read and are much better at laying out the rules of the game than the original books.
I plan to buy the Monster Vault and the second Heroes book but I will likely stop my 4e buying right there. Those 5 books have nearly everything I want from 4e and more than enough material to run a few 4e campaigns each year. The primary reason I got Essentials was to teach my 12 year old to play. It worked really well for that and I have no regrets in making the purchase. We've both had a lot of fun and I have found something I like in 4e.
Naturally, the rest of the time Pathfinder will remain my preferred default fantasy system, but Essentials now has a place at the table as well.
Of course that's all just my opinion.
Thank you all.