D&D 4E 4e Essentials as a new edition and 4e's longevity

Recently, largely I think thanks to the normally reliable Shannon Applecline, the idea that 4e Essentials should be counted as a separate edition has started to gain traction. I thought I'd have a look into the subsequent published books to see what happened if we treat 4e and Essentials as separate editions.

Heroes of Shadow was the first post-Essentials book and is an Essentials supplement. There is material in there that doesn't require HoFL or HoFK such as the Executioner and Vampire but 100% of the subclasses that aren't for new classes reference HoFx and 100% of the powers can be used by Essentials classes with just the books. (It probably didn't help Essentials that the Binder was so obviously terrible and the Executioner, Vampire, and Blackguard were all cool but mechanically way below the curve as was the necromancer and a warpriest domain; it's normally considered the worst 4e splatbook).

Heroes of the Feywild is a neutral supplement that spends more time referencing the PHB2 than HoFx. The new barbarian, bard, and druid variants can be used entirely out of HoFx but explicitly reference the PHB2. I don't think there is anything in there that requires either HoFx or one of the PHBs.

Heroes of the Elemental Chaos by contrast is a "both" supplement. There's a monk subclass and the Monk isn't in Essentials - and a Hexblade subclass when the Hexblade is only in Essentials.

The Dungeon Survival Handbook by contrast is a pure 4e supplement. There are things like Rogue attack powers in there that require a Dragon magazine feat to use with the Thief - and nothing that's explicitly Essentials.

Essentials was almost certainly intended as a revamp but fizzled hard enough 4e outlived it. And fizzled hard enough it only got one supplement.

Seems a lot like a .5 edition which was meant to be used with existing content.

cbwjm said:

Seems a lot like a .5 edition which was meant to be used with existing content.

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Except that 3.5 replaced the prior material. There's a reason people talk about playing 3.5 rather than 3e and don't refer back to the 3.0 PHB.

It sounds like what a .5 edition should have been if it had been other than a shameless cash grab.

Neonchameleon said:

Except that 3.5 replaced the prior material. There's a reason people talk about playing 3.5 rather than 3e and don't refer back to the 3.0 PHB.

It sounds like what a .5 edition should have been if it had been other than a shameless cash grab.

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Essentials is more like a repacking to me.

Say if 3.5 did a PHB3 called it wssentials and the classes were warmage, beguiler, duskblade etc.

Still playing 3.5.

Monsters Vault was still compatible with earietc4E stuff?

Essentials had a very different mentality behind how/why pieces of the game were designed.

Also, feats from Essentials were obviously better than pre-Essentials feats (even to someone not trying to powergame). In a small handful of areas, that was needed. In many, I don't believe it was.

Argyle King said:

Essentials had a very different mentality behind how/why pieces of the game were designed.

Also, feats from Essentials were obviously better than pre-Essentials feats (even to someone not trying to powergame). In a small handful of areas, that was needed. In many, I don't believe it was.

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Happens every edition. You get your mid edition new wave and late edition niche experimental stuff.

It's just another form of one true wayism.

Neonchameleon said:

Recently, largely I think thanks to the normally reliable Shannon Applecline, the idea that 4e Essentials should be counted as a separate edition has started to gain traction.

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I think it's important to note that Appelcline is a bit more even-handed than that, noting both the designers' intentions as well as the fans' reactions in his product history for Player's Essentials: Heroes of the Fallen Lands (affiliate link):

What a Difference an Edition Makes: The Compatibility. When Mearls began working on Essentials, one of his main priorities was keeping it totally compatible with previous 4e books. With the release of Heroes of the Fallen Lands, players could now see that changes were indeed pretty minimal, involving: errata; updated Feat and Magic Item systems; and updated philosophies for building characters. Of these, the difference between the character builds was the largest, and had the most possibility to be incompatible.

But the designers felt they weren't

Mearls paraphrased designer Rich Baker when he said, "the choice between a traditional build and an Essentials build would basically reflect different play styles". Baker expanded on this, saying "It’s perfectly ok if, at the same table, Joe is playing a Fighter straight out of the Players Handbook, with all of the power selections that he would ordinarily have had, and Dave, sitting next to him, is playing a Slayer, out of Essentials. Those Characters, essentially, are built the same, and are transparent to each other".

But that's not at all how the D&D roleplaying community treated the new rules. Between late 2010 and early 2011, 4e players seemed to fracture into "traditional" gamers and "Essentials" gamers. At first there were edition wars over whether Essentials had replaced the core rules, then for the next year each new D&D book was scrutinized for whether it was Essentials or traditional.

So, there's no mechanical reason not to use core and Essentials products together, but you could similarly have said that 3e books could be used with D&D 3.5e (2003) with almost no problem. In both cases, the roleplaying community disagreed.

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Zardnaar said:

Monsters Vault was still compatible with earietc4E stuff?

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Yes, although they do feature the modified (I'd argue "corrected") monster stat math that later books (MM3, DMG2, Nentir Vale in particular) used, so they tend to perform differently than things from the early stages of the editions (eg MM1).

I wouldn't regard this as a new edition at all, nor did it fizzle. If anything it was a somewhat hit-or-miss rules patch, and almost entirely backwards compatible with what had come before. I spent 22 levels in the last big 4e campaign we did playing one of two Essentials characters in an seven-person group and we never got bored with it or underperformed.

Argyle King said:

Essentials had a very different mentality behind how/why pieces of the game were designed.

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And? When you reach enough supplements you have to do this - but it's within the bounds of the same edition.

Argyle King said:

Also, feats from Essentials were obviously better than pre-Essentials feats (even to someone not trying to powergame). In a small handful of areas, that was needed. In many, I don't believe it was.

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Some feats from Essentials were obviously better than most pre-Essentials feats - but a number of PHB feats were in use right to the end, and not just the multiclass feats that started and remained my first picks. And you're right that in some areas it wasn't needed - while in others the creep had already happened.

Neonchameleon said:

And? When you reach enough supplements you have to do this - but it's within the bounds of the same edition.

Some feats from Essentials were obviously better than most pre-Essentials feats - but a number of PHB feats were in use right to the end, and not just the multiclass feats that started and remained my first picks. And you're right that in some areas it wasn't needed - while in others the creep had already happened.

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I don't think you necessarily do have to do it.

The monster math certainly did need changed. That was good.

In my opinion, the changes to how to approach the game went in the opposite direction than they should have, it it lead to a weird gameplay feel in which parts of the game felt like they were working toward being different games (on top of already being a very different game from what came before). That created a bit of disconnect for the group I played with at the time.

4E started with a lot of good ideas. The execution of the ideas needed changed, not the ideas themselves.